You're Doing It Backwards
by C.B. Magique
Summary: Dr Eggman snares Sonic and Co. in a surprisingly clever trap that simplifies their minds into those of animals. It doesn't last but for Sonic and Amy the consequences of their unrestrained wild instincts do. They can't even admit they like each other, how are they going to handle a baby? Sorry, babies. [Boom!fic]
1. Nothing But Mammals

**With season 2 of Boom coming to a close, it felt like the right time to upload this story. Not that I think the show or the games are great (or that Knuckles' design was an improvement in any way) but discovering it via youtube got me back into Sonic the Hedgehog (the last time I was into StH I didn't even realise there was such a thing as fandoms, I was that young). I almost feel bad putting this out when I have so many big fanfiction projects but while those other things languish in writer's block it's kinda nice to have a break and try to put something different out.**

 **Discovering the fandom for the first time has been really cool, seeing all of the fiction and art and animations out there. I was especially inspired to write this by E-Vay's comics (if you haven't already seen them, find her on tumblr). Even if my time here is brief before I inevitably end up back into my main haunts, I hope this story entertains you guys and gives you a good chuckle.**

 **Please review and let me know whether you like this or not. You never know, I may end up deciding to stay.**

* * *

 **Chapter 1: Nothing But Mammals**

* * *

There was a loud BANG that reverberated through the walls of Dr Eggman's evil lair as the door to the main lab was kicked in. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Sticks stood on the other side with fists balled or weapons out, ready to fight. Startled and infuriated by their typical bad manners, Eggman turned around.

"Why don't you ever just use the doorbell?!"

"Jig's up, Egghead," Sonic said, "now call off your cymbal-monkeybots wrecking havoc in town, they're really annoying."

"Why do you always assume it's my fault whenever a legion of robots so innovatively designed and built that only a handsome genius - not unlike myself - could have pulled it off attacks your village."

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because it always _is_ you?"

"Good point." Eggman pressed a button on his console. The hero teamed leaped forward, expecting the move to be followed with a typical cry of "robots, ATTACK!" but it didn't come. As soon as all feet were off the ground they were all trapped in a tractor beam, frozen in place. Tails tried to say something but all that came out were muffled sounds and squeaks. Every external muscle was paralysed. Seeing his plan come to such a grand success, Dr Eggman laughed maniacally.

"Marvellously done, sir," Orbot praised. He'd raise his eyebrows in pleasant surprise if he had any. "With Sonic and all of his friends incapacitated like this there's no way for any of them to stop you in any future endeavours."

"Your plan to capture Sonic actually worked for a change," Cubot said stupidly.

"Shut up, you waste of bolts! This is only part one of my most evil and most genius plan to date."

"Part one?" the robots questioned, fearing that Dr Eggman was about to come to his own undoing again.

"Of course, dimwits! I can't just leave them here like this. What if someone breaks in and lets them free? Not to mention, running five tractor beams at the same time is a huge drain on the grid—if it keeps going the lab will run out of power in 12 hours. Then they'll be back to stop me. No, I need to have a failsafe to ensure that even if they did escape they will be incapable of enacting their usual heroic shenanigans."

"Excellent thinking!" Orbot gushed. "I must say, your villainous game has never been quite as high as it has been today."

"You actually did something smart for once!" Cubot exclaimed.

Dr Eggman growled. "As soon as I finish taking over this pathetic island I'm dismantling both of you and building new minions."

The robots hung their heads but stayed silent after that. Eggman swivelled back to the control panel and got to work. A panel popped open next to the tractor beam machinery on the ceiling and five mechanical arms slid out to attach a headband to Sonic and his friends. Each one fit perfectly, designed for the individual head it was made for. Once they were securely mounted, the headbands beeped and lit up. Eggman disabled the tractor beams. The five animal people slumped to the floor.

To Orbot and Cubot's surprise, they didn't just leap back up into a fighting position. They slowly lifted themselves up and looked around with big curious eyes and twitching noses as if they'd never seen the place before.

"What have you done to them?" Orbot asked, a little disturbed when Tails leaned down to lick his own crotch while Sticks and Knuckles noticed each other and began to growl threateningly.

"Hehehe, those special headbands are brainwave scramblers," Dr Eggman chuckled. "Specifically for scrambling the more human-like thought processes. They're nothing more than animals now. Even if someone tried to ask for their help they don't have the faculties to be heroes."

"That's... actually genius," Orbot remarked.

"Forget that, it's genius!" Cubot chimed.

"I know. Now, seeing as those cymbal-monkeys were just a false flag to get Sonic and his dumb friends to come here, I'm taking the actually-deadly robots to the village to wreak havoc. Don't let these stupid animals poop on the carpet while I'm gone."

He strode out of his lab without a backward glance. The door closed behind him just before he could notice Knuckles scamper past on the run from Sticks. They loped awkwardly on all fours (anthropomorphic animals were meant to stand erect, after all), jumping all over the furniture and tipping over Eggman's possessions. Tails scurried over to the computers and control panel to snoop around for interesting nooks to investigate. Sonic sniffed at Amy like he'd never met her before but she just crawled away. He went after her. Orbot and Cubot exchanged worried looks. How were they going to keep this lot under control?

* * *

Cages. Obviously. It took some doing but the minion robots managed to herd Team Sonic into cages. It also took some doing over because now that they were as simple-minded as wild animals they weren't quite as good friends as they used to be. So far, segregating them by species seemed to be going well. Now all that was left was to clean up the mess they'd made in the meantime. Orbot looked around at the chewed cables, shredded paper, dripping chemicals and liberal amounts of pungent animal spray around the lab and sighed. He was about to go and get the mop but was interrupted by a banging sound.

"Hey! Bad hedgehogs!" Cubot shouted, hitting a rolled up magazine against the bars of a cage, making the sound Orbot had heard. "No fighting! Don't make me separate you two!"

Orbot cringed. "Cubot... they're not fighting."

"Really? Oh, that's a relief." Cubot stopped hitting the cage and turned to him. "Here I was thinking we'd have to go and find another cage and then let them out again and catch them again and try to put them back in again and, you know, I'm not really up for going through all that again."

"We should try to separate them or we may have a more complicated situation on our hands," Orbot insisted.

"Ooookaaay," Cubot whined with as pouty an expression as he could make. "I'll go back to the prison implements storeroom and- oh, hey! There's a spare cage right here. Phew, lucky I don't have to go all that way again."

"We shouldn't have a spare cage," Orbot said, looking over to Cubot standing next to an empty cage where Tails was supposed to be. "The fox is gone?!"

"Dr Eggman had a fox? Why didn't you guys tell me? Foxes are so cute."

"No, Cubot," Orbot sighed. "I think your memory needs a defrag. We put Tails in that cage just half an hour ago and now he's gone."

"How? It's not as if foxes are infamous escape artists."

Orbot stared at Cubot disappointedly. "Regardless, we need to find him before he does any damage. Let's see what the security camera picked up."

Orbot hovered up to the console and swiped his hand across it. Nothing happened. Confused and fearing that the worst had already happened, he went around to the back of the console where one of the access panels was. The panel lay on the floor, slightly bent out of shape from being chewed out of position. Inside the crawl space sat a little yellow fox chewing and scratching the hardware.

"Hey! Bad fox!" Cubot exclaimed, brandishing the rolled up magazine.

Tails glanced at them. Cubot took a swing but narrowly missed as Tails jumped out of the crawl space and barrelled between them, sending them both spinning out. He dragged some of the cables out as he went. The broken wires sparked furiously. Then the machinery burst into flames.

"What do we do?!" Cubot screamed.

"You put out the fire, I'll catch Tails," Orbot ordered.

While Cubot beat at the flames with his rolled up magazine, Orbot zoomed off to do just that, first making a beeline to the nets and lassos they'd brought up to wrangle the anthropomorphic animals. Just as he got there Tails sprang out in front of him, grabbing the bars in his teeth and scampering off with them.

"You've got to be kidding me," Orbot groaned. Now he'd have to try to catch the fox by hand. Which turned out to be extremely hard because even though Tails couldn't remember how to fly in his current state he was still fast on all fours. Orbot had a golden opportunity when Tails jumped up onto one of the lab benches - the one with the burners - and tripped over a gas valve. The net and lasso dropped from his mouth as he tumbled over the rest of the valves, knocked over the few beakers and flasks that were unbroken, and then rolled over the end of the bench. He sat up, seemingly bewildered by the turn of events. Orbot swiftly tossed the net over him.

Orbot sighed and wiped his brow - nothing more than a programmed gesture for emotive effect since robots couldn't sweat. Things were back on track to getting under control.

"Uh, need a little help..." Cubot called.

On the other side of the lab the console was up in full flame and Cubot was trying to shake the fire off his magazine.

"You were supposed to use a fire extinguisher!"

"Well how was I supposed to know that?" Cubot said angrily with his arms akimbo.

Suddenly the air itself caught alight.

"The gas!" Orbot exclaimed, remembering the valves only seconds before the entire lab exploded.

Somehow, nobody died. Several minutes later, five anthropomorphic animals with charred fur stirred among the rubble and twisted metal of what was once a lab. Their robot keepers were bent out of shape and shorted by the shockwave from the explosion. Everything electrical had malfunctioned but there was a wealth of sunlight streaming in from a giant hole in the wall.

"How long have we been out?" Sonic groaned. "I remember busting into Egghead's lair and then—"

He rubbed his head and paused. He pulled the headband off and stared at it. The computer nodes hissed sparks, the one that had been pressed against his right temple exploded with a pathetic _pop_. Looking to each of his friends, they all had one and were also gradually discovering it.

"What are these?" Amy wondered, staring at hers.

"They look like the mind control bands that Lyric used," Tails observed.

"Well, he's gone so it can't be that," Sonic said. "So the only person left is Eggface."

"But why put us under mind control and then just leave us in his lab?" Amy asked.

"I don't know why every villain we face is deliberately incompetent," Sonic replied, "which is partly why I'm so disconcerted as to the fact that we're sitting here with mind control devices on us and don't remember what we did after coming to Eggman's lair."

"Whatever we did, it probably has nothing to do with all the smoke coming from the village," Knuckles remarked, pointing out the hole in the wall to the columns of black smoke rising from Hedgehog Village.

"WHAT?!" the others screamed, racing over to the opening and staring out.

"It was all a trap to lure us away from the village so we couldn't protect people," cried Sticks.

"For once, what Sticks said isn't crazy," Sonic said. "Let's get back to the village pronto."

Everyone else voiced their agreement and they all leaped out of the lab to see if the Tornado was in a condition to fly. Tails went full throttle with the others dragging behind on their way to confront Dr Eggman.

(And they win. Obviously.)


	2. The Symptoms

**Fast updates because I've technically finished the story already. Thank-you to those who have reviewed so far.** _ExMarkSpot_ **,** _Sonic Thruster_ **,** _Milky-_ _Wayne_ **,** _ItsHyperKB_ **and** _guest reviewer_ **, your comments keep my soul alive.**

* * *

 **Chapter 2: The Symptoms**

* * *

Being so experienced with regular Dr Eggman antics of the destructive kind, it wasn't even a week before everything was cleaned up and after two weeks the village looked like nothing had ever happened. For a while Sonic and his friends were wary of confronting Eggman directly at his lair again so Dr Eggman had to resort to his usual tactic of poorly thought-out robot battles in the village square, which worked out great for everyone except him. Then, thankfully, there was another lull in attacks, which usually signalled that Eggman was up to something bigger but the team would crush that plan when it happened. For now, it was a beautiful morning on their tropical paradise island and Meh Burger had a new breakfast menu that was sure to be barely palatable. So Sonic and friends decided to make a morning of it.

"I think my pancakes are uncooked in the middle," Tails complained, lifting one half of a pancake. A sluggish liquid fell out of the core and landed with a splat on his tray.

"At least yours is probably made of pancake mix," Sticks said. "I think these hash browns are actually made of recycled office paper."

Sonic chewed a bite of bacon and egg burger, weighing up whether or not it was passable enough to actually swallow as he looked around. "Where's Amy? She was supposed to be here."

"Maybe she's invisible," Knuckles thought aloud.

"Don't be stupid, Knuckles," Sticks retorted. "What purpose would it serve for the alien invaders to make Amy invisible?"

"Um..." Knuckles thought, scratching his head. "Maybe they're trying to distract us into looking for her so they can blow up the town while we're not here?"

"Unbelievable! Those wily extra terrestrials! YOU CAN'T FOOL ME! YOU HEAR ME?" Sticks screamed, shaking her fist at the sky.

"Calm down," Tails sighed, "nothing terrible has happened to Amy."

"How do you know?"

"Because she's coming right now." Tails pointed into the square.

Sure enough Amy was just arriving with a reusable cup in one hand. "Hi guys. How's the breakfast menu?"

"Barely adequate," Sonic answered.

"It's like Meh Burger, only breakfast," Knuckles added.

"Try it out for yourself," Tails said, nodding towards the counter. "The queue's died down and none of us have ordered the breakfast smoothie yet."

"Actually, I'm going to pass," Amy said, sitting down. "My tummy wasn't feeling so good this morning. You guys enjoy your food, I'll just try to settle my stomach with this herbal tea blend."

"You call this a breakfast?!" came a sudden cry from the counter, where Dr Eggman hovered threateningly over Dave in his Eggmobile. "I've eaten office paper with more flavour than those hash browns!"

"We'd better go stop Eggman from bullying Dave," Sonic muttered flatly, signalling how much he didn't want to.

"In a bit," Tails said, "I want to see him squirm a bit since he ruined pancakes."

Cue obligatory conflict with Eggman... after a few minutes of Dave being tormented.

* * *

A few weeks later...

* * *

A friendly volleyball match between friends that ended in another cookie-cut action scene with Eggman's robots and an easy victory had Team Sonic in the mood to eat out for lunch. Which meant Meh Burger.

"Here's your order, ma'am," Dave droned, placing a tray in front of Amy.

"I ordered a double Meh Burger meal with extra fries and a lemonade," Amy reminded him. "This is just a fish sandwich and the fish is still alive. Why do you keep doing this to me?"

"Sorry, no refunds."

Amy's glare got even angrier and her lips pulled back in a snarl. Suddenly her hammer came out and she screamed: "I ORDERED A DOUBLE MEH BURGER WITH EXTRA FRIES AND A LEMONADE!"

The hammer came down with the ferocious force she reserved for smashing robots and other metal things. The fish sandwich squelched under the hammer and the bench buckled, sending up a plume of dust and splinters. Behind her in the queue, the rest of her friends went slack-jawed. Dave cowered by the drinks fridge for a few seconds, then dashed off somewhere around the back. He returned quick-smart with another tray, this time laden with a double Meh Burger with extra fries and a lemonade, as well as something else.

"S-s-s-sorry, ma'am," Dave whimpered, holding out the tray with shaking hands. "H-here's y-your order w-w-with a free d-d-dessert as ap-p-ology for the mix up, m-ma'am."

Amy's hammer disappeared in a wink and her mood brightened just as quickly. "Ooh, chocolate raspberry swirl mousse."

She happily grabbed the tray and turned around to get a table, leaving the mess behind as if she hadn't done anything.

"What the heck just happened?" Sonic exclaimed.

"I can't believe it," Tails said. "Dave actually apologised for making a wrong order."

"And Meh Burger has desserts," Knuckles added.

"This can only mean one thing," Sticks said conspiratorially, "Dave the Intern has been replaced by a robot!"

"Nah, we already did the 'robots taking over low income menial jobs' episode," Sonic pointed out. He'd figured it was something to do with Amy but it was his turn to order. Maybe he could take advantage of the current conditions. "I'd like to order a chilli dog and an orange soda."

"We're closed for repairs," Dave whined.

Sonic growled.

* * *

Some more weeks later...

* * *

Sonic twitched and opened his eyes in annoyance. He didn't have a clock but he could tell that it was the dead of night. Why was his communicator buzzing at this hour? Probably one of Eggman's crackpot schemes to catch them off guard. He leaped out of his hammock and activated the voice call system.

"What's up, guys? Where's the doomsday device?"

"It's just me, Sonic," Amy's voice replied.

"Amy? Why are you calling in the middle of the night if it isn't an emergency?" Sonic snapped.

"It is an emergency! I ran out of ice-cream and chocolate and salt and vinegar potato chips but all the stores in town are already closed."

"What's that got to do with me? I can't do anything about that."

"Well, the next town over has a 24 hour mini-mart. Can you just run over there for me and get some snacks?"

"I could, seeing as I'm the fastest thing alive, but why now? Can't this wait until morning?"

"No! I just... I really need them now, okay?" she sobbed. Sonic baulked. Did he just make her cry? Over this nonsense? "Please?"

Sonic groaned. "Okay, I'll do it." Why was he so weak?

* * *

Half an hour later Sonic was at Amy's door with a large bag full of all the snacks she'd all but demanded over the communicator. He rapped loudly on the doorframe and called out to her but there was no response. He tried twice more within the space of five seconds and by then was too impatient to wait for her to answer the door so he just barged in.

"Amy, I got your snacks!"

The house was dark. He flicked on the main house light. There was a mumbling and stirring from the curtained-off alcove where Amy's bed was. He gaped at her in disbelief. She was already asleep!

"Amy, wake up!" he said, zipping over to shake her fully awake. She rolled over and looked up at him sleepily. "I went to the next town over and bought the snacks you wanted. The ones you said you needed right now."

He thrust the bag at her. That woke her up a bit more and she sat up in bed. "Oh, Sonic, thank-you. You didn't have to go all that way for me."

"Actually I kind of did," he reminded her bitterly. "Now are you gonna eat, or what?"

"I appreciate this, I really do," she said, taking the bag from him, "but I realised that I'm not actually that hungry right now. I'll just put these away in the kitchen and eat them later."

Sonic spluttered incoherently as Amy got up to put the snacks away. After a few moments he finally found his voice again and shouted: "Are you kidding me!? I could have done this in the morning! I only went all that way because you cried about it and then I get here and you're not even hungry?! What the ever-loving heck?!"

Amy dropped the bag on her counter, staring at him in shock. Sonic glared at her with his arms akimbo, tapping his foot impatiently for her explanation. Then her eyes began to tear up.

"I-I'm sorry," she sniffled. Sonic recoiled in fear. He couldn't handle feelings. "It's just, at the time it seemed so important and then it just wasn't, I'm sorry, okay! You don't need to shout at me."

And then she was full on bawling with her face in her hands. Sonic rushed over to her side and patted her back comfortingly, all the while trying to think of a way to fix this.

"Don't worry about it, it's fine, really," he blurted out in a hurry. "You know what, I'm not even mad."

Amy wiped her eyes and looked at him dolefully. "Really?"

"Not at all! Guess I was just tired. Yeah, that's it, tired."

She perked up suddenly, scrubbing away the last of her tears. "That's a relief! For a second there I thought you were really angry." She grabbed his head in both hands and gave him a kiss on the cheek that left him petrified. "You can crash on my couch if you don't think you can make it back to your shack."

Sonic shook himself back to normal. He dashed back to her front door, ready to abscond before he was faced with any more emotional gymnastics. "Thanks for the offer, Ames, but nothing beats the trusty hammock. I'd better get back home for some shut eye. Sleep well. Bye."

He slammed the door shut and booked it to his shack. All the while his mind was reeling. Amy just kissed him. Amy. Just. Kissed. Him. Sure, it was just on the cheek but still. They were friends, two people could kiss each other and still be friends, she didn't mean anything by it, he kept telling himself. It was a good rationalisation. Didn't mean he didn't run into a couple of trees on the way home thinking about her lips on his skin.

* * *

Even more weeks later...

* * *

It was another beautiful day over the pristine beach where Sonic's shack was located, a perfect day for one of Amy's picnics. They were enjoying it too, sitting around a table outside in the sea breeze with burgers, fruit salad, and homemade lemonade. Until the mad doctor showed up.

"Behold! My new and improved Fire Bot!" Dr Eggman yelled from the relative safety of his Eggmobile. Fire Bot took a step forward to menace the five friends. Nobody moved from the picnic table. In fact, they all looked rather bored.

"It looks exactly the same as your old Fire Bot," Sonic said flatly.

"That's where looks have deceived you," Eggman responded with an evil chuckle. "Fire Bot, douse that blue aquaphobe!"

The Fire Bot reached back and pulled a nozzle over its shoulder, different to the flame-throwing nozzle on its staff. It pumped out a high-pressure stream of water. Sonic's eyes widened in fear and he zoomed out of the way, causing the blast to hit Tails instead. It knocked him right out of his seat and slammed him into a palm tree. The other three leaped to their feet, fists and weapons out.

Amy, Sticks, and Knuckles charged for the robot. Fire Bot pointed its original nozzle at them and threw a jet of fire. Startled, they scattered from the flames, except for Amy who suddenly didn't feel as agile as she used to be and fell on her behind, dropping her hammer. Embarrassed, she tried to get back up but it was like all of her core strength had gone completely. She bent her knees and leaned on her hands, struggling to find the balance to get back to standing

Meanwhile, Sonic tried to get closer but was kept on his toes dodging streams of water. Sticks threw her boomerang only for it to be shot out of the air and burnt to black ashes. Knuckles tried to help her out by punching the fire, only for it to burn his fist. With the robot spraying fire liberally in their direction, they couldn't get close enough for hand-to-hand combat. Amy finally got back to her feet with an exhausted sigh. She reached for her hammer but the act of reaching down for it sent her off kilter. It was like all flexibility in her waist had been compromised. It could have had something to do with all of the weight she'd been gaining there lately but she dismissed it as something to deal with at a later time with a strict dieting regime. Right now her friends needed her and her hammer and yet she was unable to get it.

The standoff came to a momentary lull when a coconut from above hit Fire Bot in the helmet with a heavy thud. Its sensors panned upwards, finding Tails in the air with an armful of coconuts and one poised to be thrown.

"Guys, Fire Bot has a hose behind it siphoning the water straight from the sea!" he told them, able to see it clearly from his vantage point. "Knuckles, dig a tunnel under Fire Bot and get behind it."

It sounded a lot better than trying to punch fire, so Knuckles put his singed hands to the task of digging in the soft, moveable sand. Fire Bot tried to follow Eggman's orders to stop him but was hit again with a coconut. It aimed its flamethrower upwards to burn away the third coconut and Sticks ran in close. She kicked it in the arm, throwing the flamethrower of its aim, then she ducked under the arm pit and yanked the hose from the fuel tank, cutting off its fire capabilities. At roughly the same time its legs sank into a sudden sinkhole as Knuckles tunnelled underneath it. He emerged on the other side, grabbed the hose with both hands and with his enormous strength pulled until it tore apart. The water jets keeping Sonic preoccupied slowed to a dribble of leftover drops, giving him the opening to rush at Fire Bot and smash a hole through its torso.

Dr Eggman growled. "You may have won this time, but next time—"

Tails hit him in the head with his last coconut.

"Just for that, my next scheme is going to be the worst thing you've ever experienced! Especially for you, you mangy fox!" he shouted, shaking his fist at Tails. Four of the five friends just laughed at him.

"I got it!" Amy exclaimed, holding her hammer up high in triumph. The others, including Eggman, turned to her and stared, nonplussed by her so-called achievement.

"Great work picking up your hammer," Sonic quipped, folding his arms, "we could have used it a whole minute ago."

"Yeah, way to let the team down," Knuckles added.

"It wasn't like I was trying to let you down!" Amy said defensively, going red in humiliation. Her eyes felt hot and prickled with tears.

"Maybe if you hadn't gotten so fat you could have been a valuable team player," Eggman teased. Sonic, Sticks, Tails, and Knuckles glared at him angrily. "What? I thought this was a 'pick on Amy' moment."

The Piko-piko hammer flew at the Eggmobile. It collided so hard the hovercraft shot across the sea, taking Dr Eggman with it. There was a distant splash on the water that was satisfying to Sonic's ears after what Eggman had just put him through.

"Just for that, Amy, you're redeemed," he told her. He wasn't sure what to make of her sudden grin and giddy giggle. Her emotions sure turned around fast these days.

* * *

Yet some more weeks after that...

* * *

It was a pleasant afternoon when Amy came home from a successful grocery shopping trip, humming a bright tune to herself. She walked in the door, closing it behind her mindfully. Turning around, she froze.

"Surprise!" Knuckles shouted from her couch, where all of her friends were gathered. "Happy birthday!"

"For the last time, Knuckles," Sonic said, "it's not Amy's birthday and this is not a party."

"Aw, then I brought this cake for nothing." Knuckles gestured to a chocolate mud cake on Amy's table. "I'm still going to blow this party horn," he added petulantly, procuring a gold party horn out of seemingly nowhere and tooting it loudly.

"Not that I don't appreciate having my friends over but why are you all here?" Amy asked.

"Amy, we've all come to the conclusion that we need to have serious discussion about your... _odd_ behaviour lately," Tails explained.

"You're having an intervention?" Amy gasped.

"Your erratic mood swings are driving everyone crazy. You're never on time for anything anymore, like when we were going to have the coconut throwing competition and you were supposed to judge but you were so late we gave up and played something else."

"I told you, I had a bad sleep the night before," Amy excused. "My tummy was doing flips, probably from the chips and ice-cream I had for a late night snack."

"And you keep ditching us in the middle of battles," Sonic complained. "Like last week when Eggman showed up with a giant robot and you ran out just as Sticks lined up a Ball Bot for you to whack."

"I needed to pee! It's related to a water retention problem that I've been having."

"The other day when Eggman tried to raid the Deadly Equipment Warehouse you didn't even show up until it was over," Sticks accused. "Very suspicious!"

"It's really not," Amy said. "I'm just a little unfit right now. I was going there as fast as I could but then I saw an old dog struggling to get up when its owner came near to get some pats and I just couldn't help myself." She began to tear up at the memory. "And then I needed to pee a few times before I got there."

"Not to mention how much weight you've been putting on," Knuckles added. "No wonder you're so unfit. You need to hit the bench-press pronto."

"Knuckles!" Sonic, Tails and Sticks screamed.

"We agreed we weren't going to bring that up today!" Tails scolded.

Knuckles scratched his head. "Uh... whoops?"

The bag of groceries hit the floor with a _thud_ sending the contents rolling across the floor. Sonic, Tails, Sticks and Knuckles all stared at Amy in silent horror, wondering what outrageous reaction it was going to trigger.

"You guys think I'm fat?" Amy whimpered quietly. Large tears spilled out of her eyes faster than she could wipe them away.

Sonic sighed exasperatedly. "Thanks a lot Knuckles. But now that the cat's out the bag, you really do need to cut down on the extra fries at Meh Burger."

"I can't believe you guys came here just to tell me I'm fat."

"We came to tell you a bunch of other stuff too," Tails reminded her. "Where's your head been these days? It's like you forget things as soon as you know about them."

"Oh, so you think I'm fat _and_ dumb?" Amy huffed, balling her fists and throwing them down by her sides.

"Tails didn't say anything of the sort," Sonic argued.

"It's not about what he said, it's about what he meant!" Amy yelled. "Sticks! What are you doing to my toaster?"

"I'm checking it for signs that's it's been receiving radio signals from the leaders of the robot army," she said, shaking a partially dismantled toaster. "They may have been sending out a prototype wave to brainwash us into submission by causing chaos in the ranks. We need to find out how they're doing it and stop it before we're overrun!"

"That's stupid, Sticks! You're all stupid!" Amy shouted. "I think you should all get out of my house!"

"We're not trying to be mean," Tails tried to appeal but Amy ignored him to carefully crouch down with great effort to prevent herself from toppling over and gather up her groceries. She righted the bag and took stock of what needed to be picked up and paused. The bag fell over again as she burst into tears.

"What is it now?" Sonic groaned.

"I forgot to buy milk and butter," she wailed. "EVERYBODY LEAVE!"

She grabbed each of them one by one and tossed them out on her doorstep. It was the slowest eviction they'd ever experienced. "AND I'M KEEPING THE CAKE! THANKS KNUCKLES!"

She slammed the door in their faces.

"That could have gone better," Sonic deadpanned.

"If only Sonic had been more sensitive," Knuckles said with a shake of his head.

"You're the one who said she was fat!"

"I can hear you!" Amy screamed. "Why aren't you gone?"

"We'd better go," Tails conceded. "We need a new plan."

The boys turned to leave but Sticks lingered a little, staring at Amy's door with great determination. "Don't worry, Amy. We'll find a way to save you from the robot overlord."

* * *

A while after that...

* * *

Sonic woke up to the sound of his communicator beeping. It was the distress signal that the team members could send out when one of them was in trouble. He glanced at it worriedly and checked the ID. It was Amy. He grumbled in frustration before opening communications.

"Amy, I'm not agreeing to buy any snacks until morning."

"Guys, help..." she moaned weakly.

"Guys?" Sonic muttered, getting a bit concerned.

"What's the matter, Amy?" Tails' voice said.

"What happened to the sun?" That was Knuckles. "It's pretty dark for morning."

Sonic sat up. If this conversation was a group chat then that could mean she was in real trouble.

"I need... _urgh_... help... I'm in pain! _Argh_!"

"Are you being attacked?" Tails asked, sounding higher pitched in alarm.

"I'm on my way!" Sonic promised. "Hang in there, Ames."

He was out in a second, breaking the sound barrier outside his door and almost causing his shack to fall down. He made it to Amy's house in seconds. The exterior perimeter was clear at first glance so Sonic didn't waste any time out there. Inside, the lamp by her bed was on but nothing else. He flicked on the main light.

"Amy!"

"Here..." she moaned. Her hand waved behind the couch.

He was there in a split second. Amy lay on her side, doubled over and with her hands over her tummy. Between pained groans and grunts her laboured breathes were audible and her face was red and sweating. Poison. It was the only thing Sonic could think of.

"Amy, what happened?" Sonic asked quickly, kneeling down to lift her up. She only got up to her knees before throwing her arms around his neck and slumping against him. "Who did this? It was Eggman, wasn't it? I know he's a villain and all but this a whole new level evil for him. When I see him again I'm gonna tear him a new one!"

"Sonic..." Amy gasped. She spread her knees and wiggled her hips a bit, trying to relieve some of the pain and pressure. "I don't know. It - _oof_ \- it could have been Eggman. _Ow_. It just happened so suddenly. I went to the bathroom and then - _aah_ \- this crippling pain started. _Aaaaah_!"

She clutched her belly with one hand. That cramp had been the worst so far. With so much pressure on her pelvis she felt like her innards were about to fall out.

"Ok, Amy, we're not waiting for the others, I'm taking you to the hospital," Sonic decided, trying to help her up. She pulled him back down with her iron grip on his neck.

"Don't move me!"

"Amy, you're clearly poisoned! You need help right now!"

"I can't move, Sonic! It's coming!"

"What is?"

"I don't know but I can feel it!" she screamed. Something was breaching through her pelvis, large and wet with a wave of sticky fluid accompanying it along with an overwhelming desire in Amy to get it out of her. After one long groan and a great push it finally flopped out onto the carpet. There was a beat of total stillness. Sonic and Amy stared at each other fearfully, not sure if they really wanted to look but a tiny squeak convinced them that they really needed to. They both gulped and turned their gazes down.

A violet hoglet lay between Amy's knees, squirming and flexing her teeny arms and legs in a puddle of fluid. Any part of her not covered in purple fur was bright pink while she gasped for air with tiny, adorable squeaks and sniffles. Her quills were soft and pale, eyes closed, still wet all over and absolutely tiny. Sonic and Amy stared at her in horror.

They screamed.


	3. Call a (Real) Doctor

**Wow, I'm really flattered by all the reviews but also all the expectations _ ! I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to deliver in this chapter. but thank-you everyone:** _NeckBreak_ **,** _Pi pi m_ **,** _martyrex_ **,** _Serkeru_ **,** _ExMarkSpot_ **,** _Milky-Wayne_ **,** _Sonic Thruster_ **,** _Linz2_ **,** _IT'S NO USE I'M OUTTA USE_ **,** _DANGIT-Man_ **and** _ItsHyperKB_ **.**

 _SilverLion77_ **: Yeah, those are good points but to me it's part and parcel of the slapstick humour of the Boom series, particularly the show. The characters have done all sorts of dumb things that should have killed them (being dragged behind a monster truck, running into a volcano, running into walls at high speeds, there's one episode where they also survive an explosion that destroys Eggman's lair) but they didn't die because it's part of the ludicrousness. Same with the whole 'Amy is clearly pregnant but no one is sensing that'. It's ludicrous that they should be so oblivious, but that's slapstick.**

 _Alanna_ **: I'm glad you learned something from this silly fic, even if it was just new words. The double review was appreciated. :)**

* * *

 **Chapter 3: Call A (Real) Doctor**

* * *

Screaming is how Tails, Sticks and Knuckles found them once they got to Amy's house.

"We got Sticks and came as fast as we could," Tails said. "What's going on?"

Sonic and Amy looked at them with horror still frozen on their faces. Then came the squeak. The other three barged in to see what lay between them. The little hoglet's squeaks became tiny wails as she grew ever more tired of remaining wet, hungry, and ignored on the floor.

"Oh no! Amy's been infected with the larva of the alien invaders and it's burst out of her body!" Sticks screamed. She grabbed one of Amy's heavy decorative bookends off a shelf. "We have to destroy it before it reaches its adult morph!"

"NO!" Knuckles and Tails shouted, grabbing her before she could attempt an attack.

"Even I can tell that's just a baby," Knuckles reprimanded.

"I can't believe we didn't realise it sooner," Tails thought aloud. "The mood swings, increased appetite, forgetfulness, the water retention—Amy's been pregnant this whole time."

"I think there's another one coming!" Amy groaned.

"Another one?!" Sonic shouted in disbelief. "But you just had one!"

Amy responded by doubling over and screaming as another contraction punched through her. Sonic clutched his quills and turned to the others but they were all staring at the two of them in confused fear.

"Whaddo we do whaddo we dowhaddowedowhaddowedo!?" Sonic squeaked in panic.

"Fetch a doctor, obviously!" Amy growled at him.

"Right! Doctor!" Sonic exclaimed. He was out the door in a blue flash. He was back two minutes later carrying a confused Dr Eggman in his pink onesie.

"Get a real doctor!" the others yelled at him.

"Hey!" Eggman exclaimed.

"Right!" Sonic muttered in realisation. He was gone again in a flash, taking Eggman with him. He was back one minute later carrying a confused Doc wearing a pink onesie patterned with daisies.

"What the dickens?"

"No time to be shocked, Doc," Sonic rapidly explained, dropping him on the floor. "Amy's having a baby, what do we do?"

Doc looked around Amy's house in bewilderment, taking in Amy collapsed on her side next to a newborn yet still grunting and groaning in pain and the frightened and shocked faces of each of her friends pleading him with their eyes. He rubbed his forehead as he thought but he couldn't spend too much time. Emergencies like this called for a doctor, not a man overwhelmed by the situation. He fell back on his training.

"Right," he said, standing up. "Sonic, Sticks, Knuckles, I need you all to go out and boil some water over a wood fire."

"Okay!" Sonic declared, speeding out of the house. He sped back to the door. "Wait, why?"

"We don't have time to ask why!" Knuckles cried, pushing him back out.

"But Amy has an electric kettle. And a microwave. And a stove."

"We can't trust machines at a time like this!" Sticks argued. "We need firewood! Get collecting!"

They left quickly, giving Sonic no further chances to ask any more questions. Tails turned to Doc expectantly. "And what should I do?"

"Since you're smart," Doc replied, "I'm going to get you to actually help."

"Wait, what?"

* * *

The next morning was beautiful; sunny, warm with a pleasant light breeze and a clear blue sky. The kind of morning nobody wanted to have after a terrible night. Sonic barely slept after Amy's emergency and didn't want to be involved in this argument up to Amy's hospital room but here he was:

"We should have dug a fire pit," Knuckles insisted. "It would have been better."

"The stone ring was completely fine," Sonic argued, "and would have gone faster if you hadn't started digging dirt up all over the fire for your stupid fire pit!"

"It would have been way faster if you just believed me about the sacred wood of the cuckoo tree!" Sticks said.

"Your cuckoo tree was just a tree that happened to have a cuckoo sleeping in it!"

"A magic cuckoo!"

"It was just a bird!"

"I think we can all agree," Knuckles said, "that it's Sonic's fault that the water wasn't boiled in time."

"You were the one who put out the fire when we got it started!"

"Tails, back me up," Knuckles appealed, turning to their two-tailed friend who had been in a traumatised daze all morning. Hearing his name, he snapped to attention.

"Huh? Oh, nah, that wood fired water thing was just a trick to dupe you guys into staying out of the way."

Sonic gaped at Tails in disbelief. "Are you kidding me!"

"Shh!" Tails whispered. "We're here."

He pushed open the door for them to enter the village hospital's small maternity ward. It only had three beds, each with a crib to go beside it but they were all being monopolised by the only patient. Amy was sitting up in the bed closest to the window with a large cushion propped on her lap to assist cradling three little hoglets at once. Her eyes misted over with utter adoration as she gazed at their dozing, peaceful faces now that they were warm, dry and fed. She was so engrossed by their miniature yawns and curling fingers that she wasn't aware of her friends arriving until they were already crowding around her. Sticks, Tails, and Knuckles all found a space where they could squeeze in beside her and gawk at the newborns. Sonic, however, stayed back with his arms folded, glaring at them all.

"Aw! They're so cute," Knuckles gushed.

"It's amazing that all of them were squashed up inside you only a few hours ago," Tails marvelled. "I didn't think you were big enough for triplets."

"It's all well and good to be a tiny potato but they're going to need more than cuteness to survive," Sticks stated practically, waving her finger at Amy to punctuate her point. The half-asleep violet first-born reached out and grabbed the funny appendage in front of her. Sticks couldn't stop the wobbly smile that broke out on her face. "Good grip she's got there. She'll be wielding concealed daggers in no time."

"In a few years," Amy corrected her dreamily. She couldn't stop looking at them. They were all born the same night yet they were all unique. On the right lay her violet first-born with a small triangular tuft of hair pointing upwards on her head, on the left lay the bright red last born girl with a curl already falling over her forehead, and snuggled in the middle was a sky blue boy with a similar spike of hair to his big sister.

"Have you already figured out what you're going to name them?" Tails asked.

"This one should be Knuckles Jr.," Knuckles suggested, pointing to the red baby.

"I've already named them," Amy answered, "and none of them are called Knuckles Jr."

"How about Sticks Jr.?" Sticks said.

"No."

"Oh, come on! After I named an entire village after you..."

"None of them happened to be bicaudal, did they?" Tails inquired.

"I don't know what that means, but no," said Amy. Tails' ears slumped in disappointment.

"I'll settle for the middle name being Knuckles Jr.," Knuckles bargained.

"No!"

"Since this was so unexpected, you haven't really had time to prepare," Tails pointed out.

Amy suddenly looked up from her children, staring at the wall in shock. "Oh no... I haven't! How am I going to fit a whole new family in my house?"

"They can stay with me while you get sorted out," Knuckles offered.

"You don't have a house," Amy deadpanned.

"No, but I know where to get heaps of sleepwalking berries and coconuts."

"They can't eat solid food and we don't know if the dosage of sedative in the berries might kill them," Tails retorted, frustrated at Knuckles for butting in. "I only mentioned it in a lead up to offering to build some stuff you'll need in my Build-it Box."

"Oh, Tails, that would be wonderful," Amy thanked him.

"And I can set booby traps around your house to protect you and your babies from ambushes and sieges," Sticks offered.

"That's nice but not actually helpful."

"I can also clean the bloodstains out of your towels and carpet."

"That's actually helpful."

Sonic narrowed his eyes and tapped his foot impatiently while his friends went goo-goo over the new babies and kept asking question after pointless question. Maybe he should have been more supportive but he was just furious. "So you're going to make me be the one to ask the most important question here," he piped up loudly.

The other four all turned to him questioningly.

"What's more important at the moment than figuring out the logistics of acquiring everything Amy's going to need before she and the babies are discharged this afternoon?" Tails wondered, sincerely curious.

"Who's the father?!" Sonic shouted.

All three hoglets scrunched up their tiny faces and started to cry, upset by the abrasive noise. Amy quickly busied herself trying to rock and shush them back to calmness and pointedly ignored the question.

"Look what you did!" Sticks chided. "How hard is it to believe that they came into being from a magical immaculate conception?"

"Very hard because that idea is stupid!" Sonic retorted. "Spit it out, Amy! Who've you been fooling around with?"

"N-nobody," Amy mumbled, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. "I don't know how this happened."

"How can you not know?!"

"I smell foul play," Sticks grumbled.

"If that's the case, figuring this out is a high priority," Tails conceded. "After we've sorted your house and supplies, we should start an investigation. We could even ask Vector back to help us search for clues."

"Don't worry, Amy. When I find out who did this to you, I'm gonna punch him in the face!" Knuckles promised.

However, Sonic wasn't keen to let the accusation go. It burned him up inside just thinking about it and he needed an answer (not that he thought an answer would make him feel better but giving that guy a hard time might). "Was it Mike the Ox? Or Fastidious Beaver? Or the ice cream cart guy? Did you just feel sorry for him getting his cart blown up all the time?"

"Why would you think I'd ever be with any of them?" Amy sobbed, too hurt by the accusation to fan the flames of anger in her voice. "They're all lame! Every guy living in this village is lame!"

"Then it was Shadow," he hissed. It made sense to him. Shadow was the only other guy he could think of who wasn't lame and didn't technically live in the village. Of course Amy would think he was great. He was cool, broody, strong, smart, and he could teleport but he was also a villain who'd tried to destroy the world. How could Amy see more in him than anyone else?

Sticks, Tails, and Knuckles gasped, turning to Amy. She looked at each of them, feeling singled out by their gazes. "You don't seriously believe Sonic, do you?"

Tails fidgeted. "Well... isn't beyond plausible deniability. Your babies don't seem to have any hybrid traits, it only makes sense that the father must also be a hedgehog."

"Amy, we trusted you," Sticks accused, "and all this time you were fraternising with a bad guy!"

"Not cool, Amy," Knuckles said with a frown and a shake of his head. " But I'm still gonna give him a Knuckles Sandwich next time I see him."

"There's no way I'd spend time with Shadow in that way!" Amy cried. "Every time he sees us he beats us up or destroys our Scandinavian designer furniture. There must be some other explanation."

"When you're done thinking up your excuse, let me know," Sonic seethed, turning on his heel to leave but the exit for the ward was blocked by two robot minions hovering in the doorway. "Great, it's you two. Usually when you show up without Eggface it's because you're sick of him and-slash-or want to rat him out for some scheme he's got planned."

"Wow, you're good!" Cubot said in amazement. "Dr Eggman _is_ planning to give Amy self-applying diapers that have a secret propeller installed to activate and fly them to his lair when he gives the signal."

"We didn't come here to tell them that," Orbot admonished Cubot. He turned to the anthropomorphic animals, who were now glaring at them suspiciously. So he added hastily: "But now that we have we don't regret it. We just felt, well, concerned knowing that you were all most likely very confused and it is partly our fault."

"In that case, prepare for a Knuckles Sandwich!" Knuckles declared.

"Hold on, Knuckles," Sonic said, putting a hand out to stop him. "Let's hear them out. What exactly do you two know about all this? Do you know who the father is?"

Orbot took a deep, fake breath. "Well, it's you."

He pointed at Sonic. The blue hedgehog's eyes widened and he started at the revelation. That couldn't be possible. How? When? Nobody even knew that he liked Amy as more than a friend (at least he thought so), not even Amy.

Knuckles turned to Sonic and cracked his knuckles. "Sonic, prepare for a Knuckles Sandwich."

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Sonic exclaimed, putting his hands up defensively and backing away from the red echidna with huge arm muscles. "This has to be some kind of mistake! They're probably trying to set us up. Why are you lying to us?" Sonic demanded, turning to Orbot and Cubot furiously. "What's Eggman's game, huh?"

"It's the truth," Orbot said, setting his vocal inflections to their highest sincerity setting. "It was all a big accident, although it's a little hard to explain..."

"The full comedic details are back in chapter one," Cubot extrapolated, "but basically, that time Dr Eggman trapped you in his lair months ago he put devices on you that turned your brains into stupid animal brains and then you made a bunch of babies. Sure took your time doing it but the results look really good. Great craftsmanship, guys!"

"Then Sonic and Amy must have mated back then," Sticks concluded.

"Without their complex cognitive abilities they wouldn't have been able to restrain themselves from their primal urges," Tails hypothesised.

"Precisely," Orbot affirmed. "I should have realised that sooner and separated them from the start but by the time _it_ happened things got a bit chaotic."

"Tails escaped his cage and distracted us," Cubot said. "So technically it's his fault."

Knuckles turned to their two-tailed friend. "Tails, prepare for a Knuckles Sandwich."

"Cut it out, Knuckles," Sonic snapped. "If it's anyone's fault, it's ultimately Eggman's for putting us through that crackpot scheme."

"Dr Eggman, prepare for a Knuckles Sandwich! Oh, wait, he's not here."

Sonic rolled his eyes at his friend's stupidity then turned to Amy. He hadn't checked for her reaction at the moment of the revelation but it was too late now. She had her head bowed forward and turned so that he couldn't see her face past her quills. She was still rhythmically rocking the triplets but they had quietened down a few minutes ago. Sonic swallowed hard, trying to push down the guilt clogging his throat from all the horrible accusations he'd just levelled at her.

Tails cleared his throat. "You know, we don't have much time to prepare Amy's house for her new kids. We should get on that."

Sonic let out the breath he didn't know he was holding, thankful for the tactful change of subject. "Yep, gotta get on that. And I'm gonna dash over to Eggman's lair and mess him up."

"Hey! That was my job," Knuckles pouted.

"No," Amy cut in. Sonic and Knuckles turned to her. She was looking at the two of them angrily and sharing her gaze equally. Sonic wished she had been sending more of the glare at him or even looking away from him. That might have given him some clues on what to do in the wake of his conduct. He didn't want to bare his soul in front of all of his friends but at the same time he didn't want to pay for it later. "You two need to help as well."

"And we," Orbot announced, "will be returning to our posts as loyal minions."

The two robots spun around to leave quickly before they got sucked into any shenanigans. They half expected to be caught and dragged back but anyone who would have done so was caught up with Amy's new living arrangements and how they were going to fulfil them in only a few hours. Except for Sonic, who was caught up in his own thoughts and looked traumatised by them. He and Amy made babies. And he didn't remember it. How disappointing. He shook his head and smacked himself for thinking such a thing because he didn't like Amy that way even though he did and he so terribly wished that he remembered making babies with her and he really needed to stop thinking about making babies with Amy but it was hard to think about anything else right now. He needed to think about the moment happening right now. The babies were already made and now they needed to be raised. He didn't want to think about it.


	4. Time to Dad Up

**Big thank-you again to all my reviewers:** _NeckBreak_ **,** _ExMarkSpot_ **,** _SilverLion77_ **,** _Serkeru_ **,** _Viggar_ **,** _ItsHyperKB_ **,** _Alanna_ **, and** _IT'S NO USE I'M OUTTA USE_ **! Sorry for the slight delay in getting this chapter up, real life got in the way a bit.**

* * *

 **Chapter 4: Time to Dad Up**

* * *

It was late morning on another mostly perfect day on Bygone Island when Tails approached Sonic's shack. The friends hadn't made any plans for today and Eggman hadn't made any attacks (yet) so he figured the blue hedgehog was probably sleeping in. Tails didn't have to look very far through the doorless doorway since Sonic was exactly where he expected him to be, snoozing in his hammock. Tails shook his head and knocked loudly on the doorframe.

"Five more minutes..." Sonic mumbled.

"It's to 12," Tails deadpanned.

Sonic cracked a cranky, sleepy eye open. Seeing that it was just Tails, he stretched and opened both eyes. "Hey Tails, what's up?"

"Not much," Tails replied, fixing Sonic with a bitter glare. "I just came to remind you that you haven't spoken to Amy for a week since finding out you're the father of her children."

Sonic's heart skipped a beat. A guilty expression crossed his face but he immediately tried to play it cool. "Oh, is that all?"

Tails didn't miss the look, though. Some of his anger dissipated through a sigh now that he knew Sonic was at least aware but he was still pretty cross about the way he tried to shrug it off. "Don't you find that even a little bit hypocritical on account of how jealous you were?"

"Jealous? Me? Over Amy?" Sonic squeaked, failing miserably at trying to sound nonchalant. "No way. Besides, she's got everything she needs now and she seems to be doing alright."

"And you know that because you saw her when? And you were totally jealous. We all saw how angry you were at the mere thought that she could have been with someone else."

"I was just worried that someone hurt her," Sonic exploded, almost leaping out of his hammock but he reined himself in, "because she's my friend! Who I care about in a way that is completely platonic and there are no other implications attached!"

"Then why don't you go over to her house now and talk to her? You know, as a 'friend'?"

"Oh, well, I would," Sonic said shiftily, "but I gotta rest up so I can be on my A-game when Eggman decides to attack. If Amy wants to talk she can buzz me."

He rolled over, turning his back to Tails. The little fox made a disgruntled growl under his breath. Then he pressed a few buttons on his communicator. A trapdoor opened under Sonic's hammock, letting a large robotic arm with a hand attachment spring out. The hand grasped the hammock, giving Sonic only a split second of horrified déjà vu before shooting him out one of his paneless windows like a slingshot. He landed face first on the beach, getting a mouthful of sand.

"By the way, I never uninstalled that trap so if you don't go talk to Amy right now the relationship between you and your hammock will never be the same again!" Tails shouted from Sonic's veranda. He left the blue hedgehog with no choice.

* * *

Amy's house looked just the same as ever. Approaching it from the garden path Sonic wouldn't have guessed that it was a building that now housed a family of three children. It settled him a little. He could pretend that he was just strolling up to chat casually with one of his friends who he definitely didn't have a secret crush on and wasn't the mother of his unplanned children. No, that would just be too weird.

"It's just Amy," he said to himself as he approached her front door. He took a big breath to steady himself. "It'll just be like old times." He knocked.

He heard Amy call out to let him know she was coming. He preened his quills and checked his scarf. To make sure he looked casual, you know. Because everything was still normal. Perfectly normal. And then Amy answered the door.

"Hey Ames!" Sonic chirped, putting on a forced grin. "Long time no—whoa! What happened to you?"

Amy glared at him from tired eyes that had dark, wrinkled bags under them. Her usually neat quills were tousled by seven days of bed head but she looked like she hadn't slept all week. She'd swapped her usual outfit for a loose tank top and a wrap skirt sans any accessories, which was so unlike the Amy he knew. He tried to keep his face frozen in false happiness but his eye kept twitching every time he failed to stop his gaze from darting down to the blue hoglet suckling from her breast.

"I had three babies," she deadpanned. She tried to slam the door in his face but Sonic stuck his foot in the doorway to jam it. It felt like every bone in his left foot was crushed.

"Ouch... Amy, please," Sonic whimpered through his teeth that were gritted against the pain. "Can we just have a friendly conversation?"

She studied him suspiciously. "Who put you up to this?"

"No one!" he lied quickly. "I just thought that I haven't seen you in a while so I oughta stop 'round and see how you're doing."

Amy kept glaring at him, unconvinced. Eventually, she harrumphed. "Fine! You can come in."

She walked away, leaving the door slightly open. Sonic stood on her doorstep, rubbing his elbow awkwardly. He could see the passive-aggressive invitation but realised he didn't actually want to take it. Behind that door was something he wasn't sure he was ready for and might not be able to handle it. His feet itched to turn and run but the thought of his relationship with his hammock never being the same again urged him to open the door the rest of the way and step inside.

His jaw dropped. Despite looking the same on the outside, the inside looked like some freak natural disaster had struck. Amy's house had always been so clean, tidy, organised, and it smelled nice - that's why everyone loved being there so much. Now it was a mess. Her usually immaculate kitchen had dirty pots still languishing on the stove, tea towels strewn messily on the bench top and a sink full of unwashed dishes waiting for the dishwasher. Three bassinets crowded the floor near her bed, where Amy had shuffled over to lay her blue boy down. In fact, the entire one room hut was now overcrowded with baby necessities. There was a changing table squeezed next to a wardrobe that was overstuffed with the diaper and clothing requirements of three babies on top of Amy's regular clothing, bouncers clogging some of the space around the table, and a baby tub standing awkwardly by her pottery vases like it had nowhere else it could be.

Sonic sat down on her couch more carefully than he'd ever bothered before, trying hard not to look in the direction of the bassinets. Her table was strewn with craft supplies, photos, and paper off cuts surrounding a book with a two drying pages laid out.

"Watcha doing here, Ames?" he asked.

She slumped onto the couch next to him, having gotten her son settled. "I'm retroactively scrapbooking my pregnancy. It should have been such a special time but it just flew past with nobody even knowing and I don't even know how. I mean, look at this photo."

She picked up a photograph on the table in a messy pile with the others. Sonic remembered it. She'd been late but they managed to defeat a supersized version of Mega and got a random villager to take a picture of their victory poses.

"Look how pregnant I am in this photo! How did everyone look at me then and say 'oh, that's just Amy eating too many Meh Burgers and getting super fat'?" She sat up, having a shock revelation. "How did _I_ look at myself and not realise I was pregnant?"

"Plot contrivances move in mysterious ways," Sonic muttered.

Amy picked up a small fan and started to dry the pages further. The two of them sat with over a foot of distance between them. Sonic began to fidget.

"So..." Amy said.

"So...?"

"You said you came here to talk," she reminded him. "I'm looking forward to your apology."

"A-apology?" Sonic stammered. Figures Amy would go straight to talking about feelings. "Oh, uh... sorry for the rude way I said hi earlier?"

She stopped fanning and slowly turned to look at him in disbelief. It was withering enough to let him know that he was wrong, though he already knew that. He'd just hoped that Amy would accept starting off small before moving on to the bigger, more embarrassing elephants in the room, which he still wasn't ready to acknowledge.

"Um... sorry for calling you fat when you were pregnant?"

"Are you serious?" she exploded, throwing her fan down and standing up with her fists balled.

"Ames, I'm trying my best!"

"Trying your best at avoidance!"

Sonic was about to bite back but high-pitched cries interrupted him. He looked before thinking and found that he couldn't look away. "Amy..."

"They're just upset," she snapped. "Just give them a little comfort and they'll settle down."

"You're saying that like you want me to do it."

"I do because you're their father! A father who split the moment he got out of my sight and didn't come back for a week!"

"But... but... there's three of them and only one of me."

"Just go over there!"

Amy grabbed him by the scarf and yanked him over to the bassinets, placing him bodily in front of one of them. He stared down at the scrunched up bawling face of the violet hoglet in fear and gulped. He glanced over at Amy, begging for help with his eyes but she preoccupied herself with comforting the other two. She made it seem so easy in the way she picked up the red girl and cradled her in the crook of her arm and then manoeuvred her free arm to pick up the blue boy in one smooth motion. Sonic looked back to the violet girl. Okay, he could do this. He reached down and placed his hands either side of her body.

"What are you doing?!" Amy screeched, eliciting a wave of louder cries from the first born. The others were somewhat discontented but snuggled against her chest instead of blasting another round of wails.

"I'm picking her up!" Sonic replied. "Is that suddenly not good enough? I did look after Chumley for Lady Walrus once, I can pick up a baby."

"Chumley's a much older baby! These guys are only seven days old," Amy explained irritably. "Their little necks are fragile so you have to support their heads."

He grumbled briefly but didn't say anything, thinking how unfair it was that Amy seemed to expect him to just know this stuff. It wouldn't get them anywhere if Amy just got even angrier at him so he reached for the violet girl again, this time placing one hand under her head and neck with the other under her body. In the first few moments he thought he was going to drop her. Her arms and legs flailed as he lifted but he managed to find a stable yet gentle grip and get her out of the bassinet. Holding her at arm's length, he looked to Amy, silently asking if he was doing it right. Then the baby began to scream.

"I didn't do it!" he said hurriedly.

Amy sighed and shook her head. "I know you didn't. So find out what did."

"Can't you?" he whined.

"You're their dad."

"But you're their mom."

"I have two arms and I'm holding two babies."

"Can we swap? I don't know... wait." Sonic's nose was getting a whiff of something. He sniffed the baby's diaper. His nose wrinkled. "Yep, that's definitely a dirty diaper."

"Change table is right over there."

Sonic lay her down on the change table and gawked at the diaper. Typical that if there was another type of diaper Amy would be the one to use it just to be different. It looked more like napkin origami on a baby. Lady Walrus didn't stand for this hipster nonsense, store bought was good enough for her.

"Sonic, stop playing with it and change her!"

"I'm not playing with it, that would be gross," Sonic argued. He only managed to fully unfold the diaper and had no idea how to put it back together. It still looked like a napkin to him. A stained napkin but nonetheless. "What do I do with this now?"

"Fold it up and put it aside so you can get a clean one," Amy snapped. "Do I have to tell you to do everything?"

"I wouldn't be having this problem if you just used normal diapers like everyone else."

"Disposable diapers are such a waste. Cloth diapers are a greener alternative."

"I'm pretty sure a normal diaper would still be green after this," Sonic quipped.

"Fine," Amy grumbled. "Go wash your hands, then we'll swap."

Sonic dumped the diaper on the side of the change table and dashed to the bathroom. He took his time lathering his hands under the running water, trying to drag this trip out longer than he needed to even though he shouldn't if his goal was to get out of here as quickly as possible. It disturbed him that it wasn't. His conscience kept beating at him with a cane, telling him that taking off quickly would be wrong. But Amy had this under control, didn't she? And he wasn't cut out to be a dad, was he? At least not yet.

Sonic smacked his head against the wall as he dried his hands on Amy's fluffy hand towel for thinking the word he had tried all week not to think. Dad. He was a dad to someone now. Three someones. That was too overwhelming to take in.

By the time he got out Amy was apparently sick of waiting for him. She flicked him a disappointed glance before going back to the task of preparing a new cloth diaper. Recognising a bad signal, Sonic skirted around the couch to get to the bassinets the long way so he didn't have to squeeze past Amy. That might have been as awkward right now as standing in the bathroom door looking sorry. As she changed the diaper he mentally told himself he had been right all along; it _was_ diaper origami. But wasn't that just Amy's style? Why do anything the normal way when it could be done the origami way? She always had these cute things, these pretentious arts and crafts projects. Well, he called them pretentious but secretly he sometimes wished he had the motivation, determination and skills to have the kinds of things Amy had. Amy's house looked like Amy lived here, unlike his shack that just looked like some dude lived there.

She brought the baby back to her bassinet. Sonic moved aside so that she had room to put the violet hoglet down. Amy had a matching bassinet for each of them in pastel tones; red with white rose prints for the last born, blue with white clouds for the middle child, and violet with white polka dots for the first born. They were now back where this visit began with three babies contentedly dozing in their individual beds. Then it was all ruined by a loud crash from outside.


	5. All Time Low

**Thank-you for keeping my spirits up, reviewers:** _SilverLion77_ **,** _Viggar_ **,** _IT'S NOT USE I'M OUTTA USE_ **, and** _Repentorperish_ **. Comments on this story really keep me going. Now, time to find out how that cliffhanger from last chapter ends. See if you can spot my little tribute to E-Vay.**

* * *

 **Chapter 5: All Time Low**

* * *

Sonic and Amy ran outside to a sight that was statistically likely but which they were hoping wasn't true all the same. A regular sized Mega inched towards them on its treads while Dr Eggman hovered above it in his Eggmobile retracting the giant electromagnet he'd transported the robot with.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Amy Rose and Sonic the Hedgehog," he taunted. "You've really let yourself go, Amy, and not just in the fat way."

"Hey!" Amy exclaimed but still hunched over and covered her belly with her arms.

"Leave her alone!" Sonic snapped. "She just had three babies!"

"I knew there was something up with you two," Eggman declared smugly, "but _nooo_ , everyone said that was stupid. That SonAmy was a pairing for immature tweens, they said. Too problematic, they said."

"Technically, we still aren't together," Amy rebuked.

"Why are you attacking us here, Eggbutt?" Sonic demanded. "There are babies in the house!"

"I know," Dr Eggman huffed. "I sent a baby shower gift that you threw back in my face! Literally. It came flying at my front door like someone hit it with a hammer or something. How am I going to enact my most genius plans if you foil them before they activate?"

"What is wrong with you?" Amy exclaimed, getting her hammer out. "They're only a few days old! Isn't anything sacred to you?"

"Well, since I am evil... no. Mega, ATTACK!"

Mega whirred to life and lifted its powerful arms. Sonic dashed towards it. He circled the machine so fast he was just a blur. Mega tried to track him with its homing program but he was too fast. It ended up spinning itself out. Its waist joints sparked and smoked from working above their normal capacity. Suddenly Sonic broke form and zoomed towards Amy. Mega tracked him to her, pulling back a huge fist to smash them. Amy wound back her hammer and swung at Sonic in a strong drive, sending him cannoning into Mega's only eye. His spin dash sawed and grinded through the head where Mega's main computer and motherboard were. The robot's head sparked violently and its body parts rocked like it was about to explode but it just fizzled out with a puff of black smoke rising out of the broken head. Then it slumped, never to activate again. Sonic dashed back to Amy's side, arms folded and a look of smug triumph on his face.

"That was a less climactic battle then my fights usually are," Dr Eggman muttered.

"So in other words, about as climactic as all your fights are," Amy quipped.

"This isn't over yet, rodents!"

"You're right," Sonic agreed. "We haven't sent you flying off into the distance yet."

Sonic curled into another spin dash, using Mega's hulk as a spring board to launch himself at the Eggmobile and knock it out of the air. Amy ran in for the final swing and sent him soaring over the trees. Wherever he ended up, it was his problem now.

Sonic and Amy exchanged smiles. "You and me make a great team, Ames."

"We were pretty awesome just then," she giggled.

Their ears twitched, itching from a high-pitched noise that buzzed against their eardrums. It was coming from the house. Their faces fell as soon as they realised what was making it. "The babies!" they exclaimed simultaneously.

They both rushed back into the house. The triplets were screaming the walls down again. Sonic zipped over to their bassinets to pick up the closest one he could get to - violet, again - and was so panicked he didn't even realise he'd folded her into his arms to hold her close to his chest. He glanced over to Amy, begging her to come over and hold the younger two just like before. However, instead of bringing her seven days of motherly experience she just stared at the bassinets with a blank expression. Then she flopped face down on her couch.

"What?! Amy!" Sonic spluttered. He glanced at the other two triplets, reaching out for someone to hold them and then down at the violet girl in his arms, who couldn't quite settle down with her siblings' cacophony. "What are you doing?! I need you!"

He ran around to the other side of the couch with the intention of dragging her to his aid but froze at the sight of her body shuddering. Was she crying?

"I can't do this," she sobbed into the couch. "Stupid Eggman and his lame robot. This was supposed to be my naptime."

"Naptime? What are you, five?"

She shook her head. "I hardly get any sleep anymore because of these dumb babies. The day was going so well until their useless deadbeat dad showed up and brought our enemy with him!"

"I had no idea Eggman was going to show up."

"Who cares? It was a good day until you got here. I thought you were going to apologise, tell me how sorry you were for doubting me and that you were just nervous about fatherhood and spent the whole week in the library learning to be a father but instead you just waltz in like you did nothing wrong and expect me to tell you all the things you should have been teaching yourself. Even when you're here I still have to do everything, like you're just another baby I have to take care of. Damn, I'm so stupid."

Every accusation was a needle stabbing Sonic's throat and pumping more guilt into the lump there that wouldn't go down no matter how hard he swallowed. Because everything Amy had said was true and she was right. He was a terrible dad, for both leaving and coming back with nothing to show for his absence. He was scared to be signed up for a responsibility he didn't put his hand up for but instead of rising to the occasion he'd tried to avoid it. But of course he couldn't just tell her this. That would sound too much like talking about feelings.

"You're not stupid," he told her quietly, "I'm stupid. I probably should have done what you said about studying and stuff. I just wish I could have been ready for this."

"Well, you're not and neither was I but you haven't even tried! Do you even know their names?"

Sonic had nothing to say to that because again, that was true. In his head he'd been calling them Violet, Blue, and Red. He'd never asked what Amy had named them. If he wasn't holding a baby that he didn't know how to put down he might have succumbed to the sensation of jelly legs and slumped onto the couch beside her. He was soap opera levels of terrible dad.

"Can you tell them to me while we get them back to sleep?" he asked.

Amy peeled herself off the couch like a slug and shuffled over to the bassinets. She stroked their soft, fuzzy heads but that only calmed them minutely. They wanted cuddles. She picked up her red daughter first and put her securely in the crook of her arm. "This one is Scarlett."

Once Scarlett was secure she leaned into the blue boy's bassinet to do her one-armed balancing act again, getting him close to her chest in one motion. "And this is Skye."

She looked over to Sonic. "And she's Sonia."

"Aw, you didn't name one after me?" Sonic joked, trying to lighten the mood. "Though I should have expected that after how you let down Knuckles and Sticks."

"I did name one after you..." Amy replied, voice diminishing as she turned away in embarrassment. "Sonia..."

It took a few seconds for the penny to drop. Sonia was one letter away from Sonic. An 'a' was one line stroke away from a 'c'. It even sounded like it was just a girly version of his name. There was probably at least one person out there writing genderbent fanfiction with that as his name (he knew Mark the Tapir did but his variant was "Sonica". Sonic tried not to think about it too much). A warm feeling welled up in his chest like a spring, making his face and ears go pink.

Amy went back to the couch to sit down while she tried to rock the babies back to sleep. In Sonic's arms, Sonia didn't seem like she was on her way back to naptime. She'd been roused and now her tiny eyes were wide open, observing Sonic's face with rapt interest. This would take a while so he decided to sit down and wait it out next to Amy. Once the worst of the crying had stopped she gave up on rocking and cuddling and placed them in their bouncers instead. The covers were upholstered with the same fabric as their bassinets. She slouched and let out an exhausted sigh. Sonic couldn't help feeling bad for her. He'd never seen someone who looked so badly like they needed a nap other than that time Eggman lived with him and Tails.

"Hey, Ames, I can watch them while you go have that nap," Sonic offered, "as long as you can help me put Sonia down first. And if there's anything else you need—"

"The dishes," Amy begged. "Please."

Sonic looked over at her kitchen in the grossest state he had ever seen it in. Yes, this was going to take a while.

* * *

Late that night, Sonic lay awake in his hammock. His wonderful hammock with no surprise traps being pulled every now and again and yet he couldn't sleep. His thoughts churned so much that he could practically feel them shifting around in his brain. Visiting Amy had changed everything. Well, no, actually Amy suddenly giving birth changed everything and he had tried to run away from it until he visited her. He had to face the music and now it was ringing in his ears as he stared at his ceiling.

Three babies had made Amy so busy she was slack in her house chores but still the same Amy if her scrapbooking was anything to go by. In the end it wasn't just the dishes Amy wanted done, she had him out watering and weeding her garden in its sorry state of seven days of neglect, doing the laundry (the diaper laundry, no less), and then sent him on a shopping trip with a long list of required groceries and domestic products. It made him realise that for the entire week he hadn't seen her out and about. He'd kept a keen eye out for the sight of her and that giant three-seater pram she had to push around so that he could make a run for it but he'd only seen that twice. Before all of this, Amy would have been in town every day for one reason or another but now she was suddenly a homebody.

And the babies themselves... they looked so fragile like fresh petals wrapped in chiffon. They couldn't do anything yet except wave their little arms and legs around, eat, cry, and poop. Sonic had never seen something so helpless before. But he'd held one. He'd held Sonia in his hands and then in his arms against his chest. There was something magical about having a soft, tiny, warm, living thing leaning against him right over his heartbeat that made his stomach do flips every time he thought about it. And then it somersaulted right up into his throat when he thought about how Amy had named her first born child after him even before she knew he was the dad.

She had respected him. He knew there was more to it than that going by her not-so-subtle attention-seeking schemes like all those picnics with just the two of them, long walks through the island's unnaturally diverse biomes, chick flicks, and that one time she set him up on a surprise candle-lit lunch with her. Sure he loved getting her attention and it made him irrationally upset whenever other guys got to be the centre of her attention yet taking it a step further seemed risky. It was a can of emotional investment, commitment, and monogamy that he wasn't sure he was ready for, even after years of warm feelings whenever she smiled at just him, reserving time for her, and turning down dates with other girls in case that changed her relationship with him or she stopped asking him out.

He blinked and turned away from his ceiling for the first time in hours, staring at the moonlit sea. When he thought about it like that, he and Amy were practically already dating. They'd jumped up to that next step without even realising it or giving it its proper title. She was his girl.

Sonic sprang out of his hammock, suddenly energetic, a lot less weak and pathetic. If he was already hers and she was already his then having babies together didn't seem like getting too many steps ahead of the game. He could catch up and try to be a good father to their kids. The thought made him laugh awkwardly to himself. Their kids. But first he was going to make it up to her big time and after staring at the rafters of his shack for hours he had an idea.

He dialled for Tails on his communicator. "Tails, wake up!" he shouted into it.

A disgruntled mumble came back. "Sonic, it's 2AM. What's so important that it can't wait 'til morning?" Sonic heard the kit yawn.

"Look, I know I messed up with Amy but I've got an idea to make it up to her," Sonic explained, "and I'm going to need your help. And Sticks and Knuckles too."


	6. Attack of the Morally Bankrupt Doctor

**Man, it's getting close to the end. I realise that this announcement may disappoint some of you readers out there but unfortunately that was always going to be the fate of this story: short, goofy, and mostly only good for laughs (just like a real Sonic Boom episode). I'm glad to see so many people have enjoyed it so much, and special thanks to those who have reviewed since last time too:** _SilverLion77_ **,** _Viggar_ **,** _Serkeru_ **,** _Anmynous_ **,** _ItsHyperKB_ **,** _IT'S NO USE I'M OUTTA USE_ **, and** _ghosthead8503_ **.**

 **You'll probably already be able to guess what Sonic's big project is before it's revealed in full in the final chapter :P**

* * *

 **Chapter 6: Attack of the Morally Bankrupt Doctor**

* * *

At midmorning the next day Sonic sped up the road to Amy's house. Tails waved to him from beside his big, yellow crane. Neither of them looked or felt tired for their lack of sleep, they were running on excitement for what they were about to achieve.

"Sticks has Amy and the babies tied up in town and Amy is none the wiser," Sonic reported. "Where's Knuckles? He better not have forgotten."

"This'll be harder to pull off without his strength," Tail said, "but if he doesn't show up soon we'll have to start without him or we'll never finish on time, even with your speed."

Sonic scoffed and was about to make a comeback but was interrupted by Knuckles calling to them down the road: "Hey, guys!"

Knuckles jogged up to them. A piece of paper in his right hand piqued Tails and Sonic's curiosity.

"First off, I wanna apologise," the red echidna began, to his friends' confusion, "I looked really, really hard but I couldn't find the muscle I was supposed to bring."

"Knuckles, 'the muscle' is literally a part of your body," Tails reminded him.

"Huh?" Knuckles looked down at his pecs and then to his biceps like he'd never seen them before. "It is!"

"What's that paper you've got?" Sonic asked, pointing at the A4 sheet.

"This is what I went to get when I gave up trying to find the muscle," Knuckles replied, brandishing the text side of the paper. "Read it and weep. It's a building permit from the mayor's office."

"Why would that make us cry?" Sonic said.

"Yeah, that was actually really helpful," Tails remarked. He and Sonic exchanged glances. "We should have thought of that. The exorbitant council fines have premised the shenanigans of too many episodes already. Luckily Knuckles had previous work experience with the mayoral approval system."

"I did good?" Knuckles said, tail wagging like a dog. "Even though I didn't do what I was supposed to?"

"You _did_ do what you were supposed to."

"We can argue about it later," Sonic interrupted, "we should get to work. Tails, the crane."

"Right!"

Tails helicoptered up to the driver's seat. He pressed a few buttons that got the crane revving to life and then grabbed the control sticks to move the claw attachment to the top of Amy's roof. It grasped the pinnacle, digging deep into the tight thatching. Sonic picked up a tool belt lying by the crane. He fastened it around his waist and then sped towards the house, running up the walls and looping around the eaves several times. When he finished he stood back. Tails held down a button on the crane. The house creaked and wobbled as it fought to stay together the way it always had but the crane's power proved too much for it to resist and the roof popped off.

"Nice," Sonic muttered. So far so good. They hadn't accidentally demolished it. "Knuckles, grab those wooden beams. Time to put up the new ceiling."

* * *

Meanwhile in town, Amy and Sticks occupied a table for two at Meh Burger, although they took up at least twice that amount of space with the pram beside them.

"Are you sure you don't want anything other than the smoothie?" Sticks asked for a third time over her breakfast muffin and hash browns.

"Not that I don't appreciate you inviting me to breakfast," Amy said, "but I had a pre-breakfast snack at home. Now that I'm catering for my children I'm trying to be more careful about what I put in my body, which you can't do at Meh Burger. And at least this is supposed to look like unidentifiable slop." Amy took a sip of the smoothie and sarcastically added: "Mmm, artificial colours and flavours."

"They have to learn the cruel truth about the world someday," Sticks said wisely. "Who knows, maybe they'll all enjoy eating reconstituted cardboard as much as Scarlett enjoys eating her own fist."

They both looked down to the baby girl in one of the seats. She did indeed have her entire fist in her mouth and was sucking on it vigorously.

"I think that means she hungry," Amy said, standing up to go and pick her up.

"Maybe she'll like some muffin," Sticks thought aloud, taking a huge bite and chewing it down to a paste while Amy stared at her in bemusement. She pulled Scarlett's hand away from her face and leaned down like she was about to kiss her.

"Sticks! What are you doing?!" Amy screeched.

"I'm tryna feed 'er," Sticks replied while trying to keep semi-liquid food in her mouth.

"She can't eat muffins!"

Sticks swallowed. "But I chewed it up for her."

"Everything you know about reproduction is for _birds_ ," Amy told her, picking up Scarlett and taking her to the opposite side of the table. "Anthropomorphic hedgehog babies don't start to eat food in mush form until they're six months old."

"Then what do they eat?"

"They eat milk. Here, watch."

Amy lifted her out of the pram and sat back down. Sticks' eyes widened when, without thinking twice, Amy began to unbutton the front of her dress.

"You can't do that!" Sticks exclaimed, leaning across the table and grabbing Amy's wrist to stop her. "The village police will arrest you so long as you're not putting up a decent fight. Trust me, they've tried to book me before for not keeping my chest nubs covered. I had to start making my own clothes because I don't trust the mass market. Their clothing articles are filled with chemicals that when breathed in alter the brain to give you an insatiable appetite for spending money on new things you don't need until you end up impoverished by neo-capitalist consumption patterns!"

Amy scoffed and shook Sticks' hand off. "I dare them to book me. This is a perfectly natural process."

She pulled the last button free and discretely pushed Scarlett's face up to the exposed side of her chest. Scarlett began to suck hungrily, gulping loud enough to be heard across the table. Sticks jumped to her feet with her hands up to karate chop Amy if she had to. "How are doing that? Have you been replaced with a baby-feeding robot?!"

"No, Sticks, it's breastfeeding," Amy deadpanned, looking at her friend with her eyelids drooped in exasperation. "Every mammal does it; it's part of the whole post-pregnancy experience. My body makes its own milk for my babies. I can lend you the book about it that I borrowed from the library."

Sticks sighed in relief. "Nature sure is smart, making sure all the precious little ones don't get their minds poisoned early on by mega-corporations lacing baby formula with drugs."

"I'm pretty sure that doesn't actually happen but I'll agree with the unspoken sentiment that natural is best."

"Excuse me, miss," Dave's wheezy whine interrupted. He pointed at Scarlett resting flush against Amy's chest. "You can't do that here."

The Piko-Piko hammer appeared out of nowhere. "I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."

"I said do you want extra fries with your meal?" Dave squeaked as he backed away.

"That's what I thought." The hammer disappeared as mysteriously as it had appeared. "But no thanks. I'm just about ready to leave. After Scarlett's done eating why don't we go find out where the boys are, Sticks?"

Sticks' eyes darted left and right nervously. "Uh, why would we want to find out what they're up to? They're probably sleeping."

Amy raised an eyebrow at that weird response. "Yeah, it's still pretty early for Sonic and Knuckles. But Tails should be up and tinkering away in that workshop of his. Let's find out what he's up to. Plus, I want to get my kids out of public before there's an awkward screaming baby debacle."

"He's probably working on a machine and you know how suspicious machines are."

"Ooh, yeah," Amy remembered, "Tails' inventions usually end with some kind of misfortune. I wouldn't want my babies around there if something like the Beebot incident happened again. Or the multiplication machine." She shuddered at the notion of having to deal with five times as many babies as she already had.

"Not to mention that chainsaw hanging from his ceiling that he still hasn't done anything about," Sticks added.

"Yeah, Tails' place is too dangerous for kids."

People in the square suddenly started screaming. Amy and Sticks turned to the village square where people were running about in a panic trying to escape the small army of robots that often terrorised them.

"Apparently here is too!"

Amy pulled Scarlett away from her chest, causing the little red hoglet to sob loudly. Sticks pulled her boomerang from her waistband and leaped out into the square. "Amy, get the kids to safety while I hold 'em off!"

"Don't need to tell me," Amy replied, doing up the last button and grabbing pram handles. "I'll be right back. I've got an arrangement for emergencies like this."

Sticks didn't reply, too busy screaming out her battle cry and throwing her boomerang to stick into a Motobug. She jumped onto its back to retrieve it and launched off to whack a Beebot out of the air. Flying in behind the lines, Dr Eggman chuckled evilly to himself.

"The girls are practically defenceless," he gloated. "Sticks by herself is no match for my bots and once she's defeated I'll find Amy and kidnap those annoying children as part of my evil plan."

"Speaking of which," Orbot piped up, "what exactly is your evil plan today?"

"Well it's... er... I start with kidnapping the babies and then... don't question my genius!" Eggman snapped at him.

Cubot turned to Orbot and whispered loudly, "I don't think he has an evil plan."

"I'm right here!" Dr Eggman barked.

Sticks somersaulted to avoid a laser from a Beebot but got rundown by a Motobug. A Crabbot tried to take advantage of this stumble to snatch her boomerang but she jumped on its back and tore its arms off to wave them around and ward off more Beebots. She had to leap out of the way as a volley of laser fire came from a trio of Motobugs on her left willing to sacrifice what was left of their ally to get her. She recovered in a ready crouch, only to find that she was surrounded.

Another feminie battle cry screamed across the square and one of the Beebots exploded. The bots and Sticks all turned to the source of the noise. Amy stood at the turnoff to the road out of town, no children in tow and her hammer out. She picked up another rock, tossed it in the air and served it with a blow from her hammer, taking out another Beebot. Half of the remaining ground troops switched their targeting programs to her while the rest remained in a half circle around Sticks. She threw her boomerang at the two remaining Beebots, knocking them both out while they were deliberating staying or leaving. In a jump to dodge lasers she caught it in midair and backflipped to stab one of the tips into a Crabbot's main computer.

On Amy's side, the Motobugs surrounded her, revving their engines as they circled her and two Crabbots to prevent her from moving. The problem the Crabbots always had with her is that their claw range wasn't as long as her hammer's shaft, so she crushed them with two short whacks and that was the end of them. Seeing this, the Motobugs swarmed towards her. She swung at the first one to reach her and sent it flying. It hit Dr Eggman's Eggmobile, sending it offline and causing it to suddenly drop. He hadn't been able to dodge when his attention was divided by two different battles. Amy jumped as two Motobugs came at her from opposite ends and they crashed into each other. She landed on their backs and smashed the last one charging at her. Then she looked over to Sticks' side. Sticks dusted her hands, surrounded by broken robots and parts.

Eggman growled and shook his fist. "You may have won this time but I'll be back! Minions, push!"

Orbot and Cubot exchanged intimidated glances but as usual bowed to their master's wishes. They began to push the Eggmobile into its disgraceful retreat, making steady progress at a rate of an inch a minute. Amy and Sticks met in the middle of their split battlefields and high-fived.

"How's that for girl power!" Amy cheered.

"We're a great team even without the boys," Sticks agreed. She didn't expect the statement to get a scowl out of Amy.

"Those boys..." she grumbled. "I tried calling them on my way back from dropping off my babies and they didn't respond, not even Tails!"

"Oh, that's unexpected," Sticks said in a wooden voice, suddenly unable to look Amy directly in the eye.

Amy sighed roughly. "I'm going to get my babies and then give those dumb boys a piece of my mind!"

"I'll come with you! Just in case you need someone to keep you distracted for the rest of the day."

Amy gave her an odd look but didn't dignify that weird statement with a response. Instead she gave all her attention back to her poor little babies who had to go without their mother for a little while. She ran back onto the road out of town with Sticks close behind her.

* * *

They approached a shabby hut in the forest on the outskirts of town, rundown but admirably patched up with some metal sheets. Amy knocked on the door firmly and it was opened promptly by the moustachioed visage of Mombot.

"Amy, dear, you're back so soon!"

Sticks grabbed Amy's arm to stop her from heading in. "Wait, wait, wait, wait! Your 'emergency arrangement' was to leave your most precious little angels in the care of a robot?!"

"It was the best thing to do," Amy argued. "sure, Dr Eggman's a jerk but he programmed Mombot to be an experienced mother, skilled in childcare for children of all ages from infants to middle age."

"But she's an Eggman robot!"

"Oh dear," Mombot interrupted, "my boy is causing trouble for you and your friends again, isn't he? I'm so sorry, I just don't know what to do with him. Do come in, girls, I have tea and cookies."

"Ooh, tea!" Amy exclaimed as Sticks exclaimed, "Ooh cookies!"

They both entered the hut without qualm. Mombot began to set the table for morning tea while Sticks bounced on her seat at the table, eager for deliciously edible cookies after her Meh Burger breakfast. Amy went straight to her pram parked next to Mombot's sofa. She leaned over the babies with a relieved smile, glad to see them all okay. However, Scarlett was still whimpering over not being quite as full as she would have liked and Sonia was showing the signs of joining her.

"Aw, my sweet little darlings," she cooed, stroking the soft fur on Skye's head before unbuttoning herself for her daughters. "All safe and sound. Don't worry my hungry little cutie-pies, mama's here for you."

Sticks stared at Amy with a brow raised then turned to Mombot. "She's starting to sound like you."

Mombot didn't have a response to that but she was sure that anybody who sounded just like her was probably almost as amazing a mother as she was programmed to be. She set up her table for tea that was edible to organic beings, bringing out the teapot, cookies, and a cake as an extra treat. She'd just finished this when there was another knock on her front door.

"I wonder who that could be," she said as she tripped over to answer the door. Dr Eggman stood at the door, taking up nearly the whole doorframe.

"Mombot, Sonic's friends beat me again," he whined.

"I heard," Mombot replied sternly, putting her hands on her hips. "Just what were you thinking, attacking a young mother and her babies? You should be ashamed of yourself!"

"But Mombot! I'm a villain and taking out your enemies when they're at a weakest point is one of the most effective tricks in the book."

"Weren't you pushing your Eggmobile back to your lair in disgrace?" Amy interrupted. "I thought it would take a lot longer."

"I delegated that task to my minions because I'm a leader and that's what great leaders who are destined to rule the world with an iron fist do, they delegate," Eggman replied. He paused, looking at her. "Do you have to do that here?"

"It was an all-female house until you showed up."

"She does it in public anyway," Sticks added, "but the police will never book her, she's too mean for them."

"It's gross. Stop doing it in my Mombot's house!" Eggman ordered.

"I didn't raise you to speak to people like this!" Mombot scolded.

"Of course you didn't. I only built you less than a year ago."

"Apologise to Amy and myself right now!"

"But Mombot!"

"Now! Otherwise there will be no dessert for you at our next family dinner."

Eggman growled. Then he sighed in defeat. "I'm sorry, Mombot. I love you but sometimes your motherly programming functions are really frustrating."

"I love you too, son," Mombot replied, "and I only activate them to such a degree because I care about your character development."

"And Amy, I'm sorry... that you're still fat after being pregnant!"

"You jerk!" Amy yelled. "And you still lost to us! We didn't even need Sonic's help!"

"This behaviour is unacceptable!" Mombot chided. "Go to your lair!"

"I'm already going!" Dr Eggman shouted, sticking his tongue out at the girls. "Thanks for ruining what was supposed to be a sympathy trip for me to feel better about myself." He turned on his heel and slammed the door.

There were a few beats of silence before Sticks piped up: "Amy, are you sure you want to get childcare assistance from the mother of that guy?"

"Oh, I feel like such a failure of a mother," Mombot sighed sadly. "I wish I had raised him."

"Don't feel sad, Mombot," Amy said, "it's just because he's already middle-aged. All of your tips have been helping me out so much, so don't judge yourself on Dr Eggman's behaviour. Instead, judge yourself on how well my kids are developing."

"You're even taking advice from a robot?!" Sticks gaped.

"It's good advice."

"Clearly you're the most susceptible to robot subliminal messages." Sticks hummed thoughtfully. "Then again, that might mean that you'll show the earliest signs of the advent of the robot apocalypse. You may be the key to mitigating it early."

"Just eat your cake, Sticks."

Sticks couldn't argue with that. She eagerly devoured the huge slice of cake Mombot offered. Nobody mentioned robot apocalypses again and it ended up being a very nice morning tea.


	7. Building the Relationship

**Finally, the final chapter. It's been swell, guys but this is where it ends. Thank-you all you reviewers who have kept my spirits up since last chapter:** _SilverLion77_ **,** _Linz2_ **,** _Serkeru_ **,** _ExMarkSpot_ **,** _ItsHyperKB_ **,** _Viggar_ **,** _RepentorPerish_ **,** _IT'S NO USE I'M OUTTA USE_ **, and** _The Chuckinator_ **.**

 **You may have also seen that I put a new cover on this story. I didn't have any Sonic-y images for any of my Sonic stories, so I made that one up quickly specifically for this story. Probably a little late to be caring about such a detail when we're on the last chapter, although... could it be... that perhaps... there could be an extra chapter? I'm currently working on it, have no idea how long it will take. It's an idea that sprang up during my writing of this story but it doesn't fit anywhere within the main story. So look out for this brand new cover illustration in the event that a bonus chapter appears. Until then, thank-you for reading and I hope this ending satisfies.**

* * *

 **Chapter 7: Building the Relationship**

* * *

It was hours later and Amy glared at the glass window of the local jewellery shop that she had been dragged towards and it wasn't like she could just leave. She was boxed in on all sides by not one but four girls and two of them were giggling and sighing like the actresses in the chick flicks she liked to watch. It was a lot more annoying in real life than on screen.

"You should totally urge him to splurge on a big, fancy one," Staci said, pointing to an overdesigned gold ring with a diamond the size of an unshelled walnut. "I mean, surely he makes a ton with all those hero royalties, right?"

"Hero royalties aren't a thing," Amy corrected her. "Sonic only gets occasional rewards from the mayor's office for dealing with violent criminal activity. Other than that he's pretty jobless. And pretty poor."

"Girl, you need a better man in your life." Staci shook her head.

"A man is not a financial plan," Perci said wisely. "I think you should go for something simple that won't interfere with your work. Like that one." The ring she referred to was a classic design with a small, faceted diamond.

"Yeah, keep giving suggestions," Sticks encouraged. "Zooey, you tell Amy what you think seeing as I know nothing about this kind of stuff."

Zooey looked up, somewhat surprised that she had been called upon since she had become distracted with tickling the babies' fingers and toes. Their arms and legs wiggled a bit but she hadn't made them smile yet. They probably didn't know how to at this stage. She glanced at the rings in the window.

"I don't know," she replied. "Aren't things like this really personal? It should be up to Amy and Sonic."

"But we have to influence them to make the best decision by societal norms and conventions," Staci argued.

"We're just helping them find the best method of displaying their love in a way that doesn't compromise their individual uniqueness," Perci added.

Zooey and Sticks cocked their heads to the side, not sure what to make of the conflicting opinions from two people who looked like clones.

"That's enough!" Amy shouted, throwing her arms up. "I'm done with this! Sonic and I aren't even dating, we're not getting married anytime soon! I just want to go home!"

"But think of how many hours we have left to do so many other things," Sticks implored, looking around for another form of distraction. She spotted a villager walking by with her head down staring into her phone. "Hey, Rabbit Girl!"

She looked up briefly. Then she turned her eyes straight back down to update her status: _"That weird feral badger chick is talking to me. Ew. - at the jewellery shop, feeling bored :/_ _"_

"You should come and see Amy's babies!"

"I already know about them. That news was so last week."

"They were barely even born last week," Sticks muttered, quite put out. Rabbit Girl was about to walk away. Thinking fast, Sticks blurted out: "But nobody's taken a selfie with them yet!"

That made Rabbit Girl stop in her tracks. She turned around quickly. "What, seriously?"

"Babies don't need selfies," Amy said, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, you're right," Sticks agreed. "Social media is a trap to hypnotise the masses into complacency so that when the robot overlords arrive there will be no resistance to their subjugation. It's a good idea to keep them away from it."

"They have no social media presence whatsoever?" Rabbit Girl gasped. "What kind of mom are you, Amy?"

She bounced over the pram and by the time she got there her phone was already in camera mode. "Move, Zooey! I can't get them all in frame with you standing there."

"Hey!" Zooey protested.

Amy groaned. At least when it was just Zooey she might have been able to politely tell the fox to leave but now her pram was blocked by a teenager trying to find the best angles for her Instasnap account. She needed to go before it got any worse than this. Of course, just when she had thought that the shop's door bell chimed, signalling someone leaving since they hadn't seen anyone enter. Lady Walrus paused on the doorstep with a shopping bag hanging off her arm with her purse and turned to the gaggle of girls crowded by the window.

"Girls, if you must gather could you do it elsewhere?" she demanded in her usual snooty tone. "I'd prefer not to have the unsightly rabble in view during my shopping trips."

"You're just jealous because you no longer have the monopoly on cute babies in the village!" Sticks growled, shaking her fist at the aristocrat.

"To be honest, Chumley was never that cute," Perci said.

"Besides, what are you even doing in a jewellery shop?" Staci asked. "You'll only ever wear the same accessories you always wear."

"It's almost as if we've been built as static 3D models," Sticks theorised, "animated within a digital world controlled by robots and our real bodies are being held in enormous battery factories that transform the electrical signals running through our bodies into power sources. How did I not see it before? The robot apocalypse has already happened!"

The crowd of women stared at her, speechless from how weirded out they were.

"But highly probable threats to our universe aside," Sticks added, "Lady Walrus, since you actually buy jewellery you don't wear, help us distract Amy for a bit longer with nonsense advice about engagement rings and getting married."

"Why are you trying to distract me?" Amy yelled. "You've been doing it all day!"

Lady Walrus snorted condescendingly. "If you ask me, that should have been the first thing you did before getting into bed with him."

The girls all covered their mouths and let out a low collective gasp of "ooooh", turning to Amy. Rabbit Girl immediately ceased taking selfies and her thumbs tapped rapidly across her phone's keypad. Amy narrowed her eyes, putting one hand on her pram and the other on her hip when she retorted:

"You know, Lady Walrus, come to think of it, I've never seen your husband and-slash-or father of your children."

The scandalised gasps turned into a much louder exclamation as Lady Walrus gaped at her in shock. She haughtily turned her nose up and strutted away.

"Now if the rest of you will excuse me," Amy snapped, "I need to go home."

"But Amy—" Sticks started.

"No, Sticks! All of this activity is bad for my kids. It'll overstimulate them and it's so difficult to deal with triplets in public. Not to mention that I'm currently out of clean diapers."

"Then let's go launder them at Mombot's house."

"On top of all that, I'm also tired. I've missed three naps today because you insisted on dragging me around the village all day!"

"Naps?" Rabbit Girl interrupted. "What are you, five?"

"Just get out of my way," Amy snapped, pushing her pram with no regard for anyone standing in front of it. They would have to move or suffer the consequences. Sticks ran after her in an anxious state. It wasn't even sundown yet. She hoped the boys were done with their project because there was no way she was going to be able to redirect Amy now.

* * *

Back at Amy's house, Sonic and Knuckles leaned on their thighs, panting hard. Tails flew out of one of the windows and stood beside them admiring their work, relatively fresh seeing as Sonic's project hadn't required much of his physical abilities.

"Double-check of the construction work is complete," he announced. "The engineering is sound, the building is stable, and it looks great! It's amazing how much you can get done in so little time when the plot demands it."

"Okay," Sonic huffed. He stood up and brushed some of the lingering sawdust off him. "Now we just need to go get Amy."

"WHAT THE HECK?!"

The boys turned around. Turned out they didn't need to get Amy after all because she was standing right behind them with her face and body language torn between jaw-dropping shock and apoplectic rage. Sticks stood a couple of paces behind her twiddling her fingers sheepishly.

"I tried, you guys," she excused.

"It's okay, Sticks," Sonic assured her, "you tried for just long enough."

"MY HOUSE!" Amy shrieked.

"This is Amy's house?" Knuckles asked, turning around to look at it.

From the outside it barely looked like her house any more. The original pink walls were still standing but were overshadowed by the extended veranda. Over the veranda and house an entire second storey had been built, still in its natural wood colour and extra thatching had been added to make up for the larger area the roof had to cover.

"I can't believe you redesigned my house without consulting me," Amy shouted at them.

"It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise," Tails told her.

"How was this supposed to be pleasant? Coming home and finding a completely different house where my house was is totally unpleasant! What about ensuring fit-for-purpose design? What about the fittings and joinery considerations? What about the feng shui? This is _my_ house and you guys just came here and reworked everything without even asking me!"

"Amy's 100% more mad than we thought she would be," Knuckles remarked.

"Your mathematics is surprisingly correct," Tails muttered.

"Whoa, Ames," Sonic said nervously, "why don't you have a look inside before you decide you don't like it?"

"It's not about not liking it, it's about the principle," Amy seethed. "What gave you the gall to do something stupid like this?"

"It's not like—"

"Then what is it like?"

"You didn't let me finish!"

"Because I don't care what it's not like! What's your excuse, huh?"

"It's hard to say..."

"Too challenging for you?"

Sonic glared at her for that accusation. She folded her arms, equally defiant. Trust Amy to get angry and make things difficult when he was only trying to do right by her. He was about to voice that thought when the argument was suddenly interrupted by cries from the pram. Baby Skye had a demand of some sort and Amy quickly abandoned the standoff to find out what it was. Sonic's anger and frustration left him like a balloon deflating.

"I did it for them," he admitted.

Amy turned around with Skye in her arms, staring at him critically.

"I felt bad about being a terrible father and yesterday I noticed that your house isn't really big enough for all of you, so... I wanted to make it up to you by renovating your house so that there's... er, you know..."

"Room to raise a family," Amy finished for him with some gooey tenderness in her voice. Her sharp gaze softened to putty and she put a hand on her own cheek romantically. Not having a say in how her house was redeveloped suddenly didn't matter because Sonic had thought about her and the babies and their needs.

Sonic's cheeks and ears went red. "I-I guess you could say that. Here, just have a look inside. And if you still hate it then you can... I dunno, hit me with your hammer or something."

Amy smiled and nodded. She had to put Skye back in the pram to wheel it into the new house, which he didn't appreciate without his need being met first and let them know very vocally. Sonic opened the door for her and left it open for their friends but was too preoccupied with helping Amy get the babies out of their pram to notice that they hadn't followed them in.

"Looks like our work here is done," Tails declared, smiling proudly.

"We should let them have some privacy," Sticks suggested with the same smile.

"Aw, but I wanted to see Amy's new house," Knuckles complained.

"Some other time," Tails assured him dismissively.

"Yeah, we need to skedaddle so they can have a romantic, non-public courting ritual," Sticks told them. "I learned today that everything I knew about reproduction was for birds."

"You don't say," Tails muttered dryly.

Inside the house, Amy parked the pram just inside the front door. She handed fussy Skye over to Sonic, who tried not to fumble the squirming baby, while she picked up Sonia and Scarlett. She surveyed the room. The downstairs part looked almost the same as it had before but without the baby things cluttering it up. The new, flat ceiling had an oculus in it to retain the natural light from the clerestory roof but the edges were still shadowed by the floor above, necessitating the sconce lights that Tails had installed at regular intervals around the wall. In the place where her bed used to be there was now a spiral staircase going up to the second storey.

The second floor was plain for the time being but Amy was already thinking of ideas to spruce up the featureless wooden walls, doors, and floor. The balcony around the oculus had five rooms branching off it plus a bathroom. She went around the balcony, peering into the open doors. There were two empty rooms. Full of potential, she thought. The next room after them had Amy's bed and nightstand and she could see through the window that she had a level view with her garden. At the next room she paused and gasped excitedly. All of her baby things had been moved to this room: the bassinets, the tub, the change table, the bouncers. And there was room for a bit more.

"I have a nursery!" she squealed, bouncing on her feet. Her jostled daughters began to wail. She hurried into the room to place them in their bassinets where they calmed down now that they were in a stable location.

"You like it?" Sonic asked hopefully, coming in behind her.

"I love it! Sonic, this is the best thing you've ever done for me!" She clasped her hands and did a giddy spin on one foot.

"That's great, Ames. Since we're here, do you mind taking him now?" Sonic said, holding out Skye. "I think his diaper's wet and I still don't know how to change these origami diapers you have."

"Well, now's the time to learn," Amy insisted, looping her arms around one of his and guiding him over to the change table.

Sonic stared at the change table in dread. He tried gently resisting but he couldn't do much with Skye's safety hanging in the balance. "You know, I was thinking that since I worked really hard today I could take a break for now."

"I thought you felt bad about being a terrible father," Amy said. It immediately shut him up. "This is your first lesson about parenting: there are no breaks. Your babies need you 24/7. Now put him down on the cover and listen carefully to my every instruction."

Sonic did as he was told. Amy had him cornered and she was going to get a lot of mileage out of the 'terrible father' barb. Rightly so, in all fairness but changing a diaper was still gross. This eco-diaper just made it all the grosser by forcing him to deal with all the individual bits even after it was removed.

Skye let out what sounded like a squeaky sigh now that he had a freshly cleaned and powdered bottom. While Amy sent Sonic to the bathroom to flush the liner and clean himself up, she quickly redid the folds. Sonic's amateur wrapping wasn't quite good enough but at least he was learning this time instead of avoiding his responsibility. It made her smile as she set her son down in his bassinet. He was already going back to sleep, as the babies usually did whenever they didn't need anything. She took a moment admiring them, all safe, snug, and content in their bassinets while blissfully ignorant of the drama they'd brought.

She decided to give them some peace and left the nursery room. She could hear the water running in the bathroom where Sonic was apparently still cleaning himself. Figured he'd get all precious about his son peeing on him during a change. Once he got the hang of doing the folding, Amy would tell him about the sideways changing trick for baby boys (unless he learned it from the internet before she got to tell him but she hoped he wouldn't, seeing his face when it happened was hilarious). There was one last room that she hadn't looked at. Amy believed it was probably as empty as the first two she stepped into and built identically (as all the rooms had been) but the artist in her head needed to take a look inside anyway. The vista through the window was a crucial factor to take into consideration when doing interior design, after all.

The door was partially open and only needed a little push just like all the others had but once inside Amy froze. It wasn't empty at all. Sonic had brought his hammock in here, as well as the few things he kept in his shack—his baskets, his dartboard, his table, and his rugs, which were rolled up and leaning against a wall. She stared at it all, wide-eyed in surprise and wondering what Sonic was thinking in bringing it all here.

Sonic coughed awkwardly behind her. She turned around, giving him a questioning look. He rubbed his elbow and looked away from her in embarrassment. They stood in silence for a while, both waiting for the other to speak first. In the end, Amy's burning question couldn't stay in any longer.

"Sonic, why does it look like you're going to be living here?"

"Well, uh, funny story," Sonic replied, running his fingers through his spines awkwardly. "I kinda demolished my shack so that we'd have enough materials to build all of this."

"You did what?!" Amy exclaimed. "You didn't have to do that."

"I kinda did seeing as Tails' Build-it Box isn't actually unlimited. I mean, sure it makes anything but you've gotta put a bunch of stuff in it first. I think. Its powers and abilities vary depending on the writer."

"Oh," Amy moaned sympathetically. "Your poor dilapidated shack on that beautiful beach paradise..."

"Don't worry about it, it'll probably return inexplicably to avoid adherence to continuity. I mean, I do miss it and tearing it down did kinda hurt but you and the kids are more important right now," he finished sadly.

Amy had her fingers pressed over her lips but he could see her beaming from cheek to cheek even as tears rolled down her face. Sonic couldn't keep looking at that face. He tried to find something else to look at but the hall was bare and while he was turned away Amy nearly bowled him over in a crushing hug the likes of which only a woman with biceps of steel from wielding a hammer against robots every day could pull off.

"Oh, Sonic, that's so romantic! And so... so... responsible!"

"Air!" Sonic wheezed. "And intact ribs!"

She let him go and he nearly collapsed, gulping in air like there was a shortage.

"I'm sorry, Sonic," she said, so out of the blue that he had to look at her and ask her to repeat it to make sure he'd heard right. "For how angry I got at you earlier. You did the right thing and I'm really proud of you but I feel so bad about you having to move out of your home over all of this. I should have done something more to prevent it going this far - if I had just been more aware of my health and realised I was pregnant—"

"No one's at fault for this," Sonic cut her off. "Well, except Eggman because of his stupid plot and next time I see him I'm gonna rearrange his face courtesy of my now non-existent house." He took a deep breath, remembering that he had to seem like he wasn't too cut about losing his shack. "It's not like we can change anything at this point even though beating up Eggman is gonna be so satisfying. We've gone about it all backwards but before we go forwards there's just one more piece of blame that I need to own up to."

"But—"

"No, I've gotta wear this one, there's no room for argument about that. I thought about it a lot and you need to hear it. Amy, I'm sorry that things got this messy. Probably none of this nonsense would have happened if I hadn't been so stubborn and just had the guts to admit to myself and to you that I... I..." Sonic swallowed hard, trying to push down the lump that was blocking his words. "I l-l-lo-like you..." he choked, "more than any other girl."

"You do?" she whispered. She couldn't work out why she wasn't able to say it any louder. Her heart thumped hard and her stomach squirmed with a whirlwind of butterflies and she suddenly felt lightheaded. She must have floated off the face of the Earth and gone to heaven.

"Yes. Full disclosure moment, right here. And I noticed all of your hints but was too chicken to take them. If I had just told you the truth when I first knew it instead of hiding it then we probably wouldn't be here right now. Or maybe we would have been, but it would have been great instead of horrifying because we would be together and all the pregnancy signs would have made sense and we could have dealt with it properly instead of getting thrust into it unexpectedly. You know what I mean, right?"

Amy nodded automatically as though she was in a trance. The glazed eyes unnerved Sonic a bit but at least she was reacting positively with an expression that suggested that all of her dreams were coming true right now. He took each of her hands in his, which shook her from the daze and allowed her to look him in the eye properly.

"So, Amy... do you wanna... be my girlfriend?"

"Of course," she breathed without skipping a beat.

Sonic smiled. His heart and shoulders felt like they'd just shed the ton of weight pressing down on them during this entire talk. He was so relieved that the difficulty ended at the confession and didn't have to continue down the sad path of rejection where it very well could have gone after how he'd behaved towards Amy lately.

"Thanks, Ames, you have no idea ho—mmph!"

Amy shushed him with her lips on his. She pulled her hands free of his to wrap her arms around his neck, holding their bodies flush against each other. Sonic froze with his hands hovering uselessly by their sides but piece by piece the initial shock wore off and he lowered his hands to rest on her waist. Just as he was ready to go deeper, Amy pulled away. She chuckled at his expression, eyes closed and leaning closer so his lips could try to catch her before she got away. He opened his eyes disappointedly.

"Come on, Ames, don't leave me hanging."

"Okay," she cooed, bringing her hands up to cradle his head, "but just so that we have full disclosure across the board, I love you too. I have for a long time."

"Hearing that is so much better than just inferring it."

They closed their eyes and leaned forward again. They were so close that nothing should have been able to stop them but a sudden cry from the nursery hit the pause button when they were only a breath away. They groaned but took a step back.

"I guess we're gonna have to wait," Sonic sighed.

"They're a handful," Amy said apologetically, "but I feel a lot better now that you're here and you're not running away."

"You can bet I'm never running away from you again."

As they pulled apart Amy's hand slid down his arm and settled on his palm. Sonic weaved his fingers between hers and held firmly while the two of them returned to the nursery together. It was going to be hard but Amy was determined and Sonic... well, he never backed down from a challenge.


End file.
